£5633 DEFICIENCY

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20101, 22 November 1939, Page 8

£5633 DEFICIENCY

COMPANY MANAGER NATIONAL MAGAZINES FATE OF RADIO RECORD A motion that the discharge of the. bankrupt be facilitated was passed at a meeting of creditors in Wellington of Arthur James Heighway, company manager, of Wellington, who says in his sworn statement that his bankruptcy followed as the inevitable consequence of liquidation by the creditors and the voluntary windingup of National Magazines, Limited, in which practically all his capital was invested. The winding-up was begun on October 24. Bankrupt’s unsecured creditors amounted to £2029 and secured creditors to £O2IO. The estimated value of securities was £2550 and assets £O2, leaving a deficiency of £5033. Bankrupt, in his statement, said the liquidation of National Magazines, Limited, resulted from the cessation of its chief publication and revenueearner, the New Zealand Radio Record, owing to its absorption by the Government publication, the New Zealand Listener. He held 5241 fully-paid ordinary shares in the company and his wife 46(19 shares. The company after its formation prospered, the turnover growing from £21,000 in its first year of operation ended on October 31, 1934, to over £83,000 in its last complete year, ended on October 1, 1938. The company paid a regular dividend to preferential shareholders of 6 per cent and its capital assets were gradually building up. It was a sound and prosperous business, of which the Radio Record was the backbone. The business employed a staff of nearly 100 and wages were approximately £22,000 a year. The ordinary shareholders, of whom he and his wife were the chief, drew no dividends, but left all the money possible in the enterprise. He was unable to make any offer to his creditors. All his life’s work and the whole of his own and his wife’s investinents in it had been lost in the wreck of National Magazines. lie did not know when or where he could male- a fresh start.