The feilding star. Oroua & Kiwitea Counties Gazette Published Daily. SATURDAY, MAY 8, 1897. THE COLONIAL BANK DIRECTORS

Feilding Star, Volume XVIII, Issue 260, 8 May 1897, Page 2

The feilding star. Oroua & Kiwitea Counties Gazette Published Daily. SATURDAY, MAY 8, 1897. THE COLONIAL BANK DIRECTORS

Much has been written and more inferred against the Directors of the now defunct Colonial Bank, but the Insurance and Banking journal in an article on the matter throws quite a new :it;lit on the subject. Our contemporary says : — We have a word or two to say about the unique position occupied by Uio directors of the Colonial Bank, a position so totally dissimilar from that which is usually found amongst institutions which have been wound up to be worthy of particular attention It has been the custom of late to compare the Colonial Bank directors to scoundrels like James Nicol Fleming, Jabez Ba'four, and a host of minor swindlers who are now expiating their olfencss in gaol in Sydney and Melbourne. Such comparisons are wholly unreasonable and improper for, in the first place, in the case of the Colonial Bank no question arises as to the grievances of creditors, tho depositors have got their money back, every shilling of interest has been paid to date, no one (except the shareholders) has lost a shilling by any improper conduct of the directors, and this alone is sufficient to distinguish tlie position of the directors from that of the management of similar institutions which have elsewhere had to liquidate. It has been said indeßil

bhat the Bank of New Zealand was _ intended to be deceived, nnd, in fact, « was deceived by the inaccurate balance sheets published, but we do F not think that anyone who knows the a terms on which the Colonial Bank d was bought, and the men who negoti- tl ated the purchase, will consider such a statement for a moment, nor have ' t we ever heard that the directors of ; ii the Bank of New Zealand complain. ; v In the second place the directors of i . the Colonial Bank are not, and in- , a deed, cannot be accused, even by their j a bitterest opponents, of attempting to t reap any personal benefit by their management of the institution. Neither directly nor indirectly can they be accused of at'empting to fill their own pockets at the expense j ot the Bank. There were no director's overdrafts, no subsidiary institutions to be bolstered up by the Bank's money. The improper conduct of the directors was intended to be in the direct interest of the shareholders, since to have disclosed the exact and miked truth in all its unpleasant particularity would have brought the institution to the ground like a pack of cards at any time during the past five years. If dividends were improperly paid the shareholders got those dividends themselves ;. if too flourishing an account were given of the position of the Bank the shareholders, and they alone were the gainers. We do not suggest that this justifies misstatementp, but it to some extent disarms criticism. The sore point is with those who were induced to invest in the Bank's shares through the fallacious reports which were periodically published, and througli the reassuring and unjustifiable utterances o£ the Bank. That some steps may be taken to bring the directors to trial seems probable; but it is at least worth while drawing attention at the present juncture to the wide difference between the two clasees, but it ought not to be forgotten that the law which we have quoted was made for public purposes, and not in order that it might be broken to suit particular ends.