LAND DEALS LEAD TO FINANCIAL DISASTER

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 382, 16 June 1928, Page 11

LAND DEALS LEAD TO FINANCIAL DISASTER

CREDITORS SYMPATHETIC

“I cannot make very much out of this yet,” said the official assignee. Mr. G. X. Morris, when examining Bertram Wallace Miller Bailey, land dealer, of Auckland, who was summoned to meet his creditors yesterday. In the absence of books lie could not judge whether bankrupt’s plight was due to sheer hard luck or not. It was clear, however, that for about three years he had been in a position where he could not meet his liabilities. Bankrupt’s financial statement showed £9,345 owing to secured creditors, with security estimated at £14,310, while there was £1,106 owing to unsecured creditors, leaving an estimated surplus of £3,859. The security was 1,076 acres of land in se\eral lots near Matamata, and two buildings at Thames. Bankrupt said that, in 1920, he entered into a land agency business in the Waikato. It. prospered, and with a partner he bought 1,076 acres of land near Matamata, in two blocks, for £2,723 and £2,061. The partners successfully traded in the beef and cattle market until the slump ended the venture in disaster. Bankrupt described how one block then reverted to the mortgagee, only to be bought back by Bailey himself for £1,200, but later it involved him in financial difficulties, causing him to give up, at great loss, an apartment house venture which he had been succussfully conducting in Auckland. He detailed involved land and other deals over which he lost heavily. Bankrupt said his wife had been under constant medical treatment for the past five years, and he had been in ill-health frequently during the past two years.

Bankrupt admitted that the Matamata land, which he had considered

worth £l2 an acre, had been unsaleable at £7 to £ S an acre. Creditors were sympathetically inclined and passed a vote of sympathy with bankrupt and a motion that the I official assignee should facilitate his | discharge. Mr. J. Petrie, representing M. J. Bennett, recorded his vote against the motion. “My firm feels there is too much of this sort of thing,’’ he said. A committee of creditors was set up to co-operate with bankrupt in the realisation of his assets.