The Daily News. MONDAY, DECEMBER 18, 1922. THE BANK OF NEW ZEALAND.

Taranaki Daily News, 18 December 1922, Page 4

The Daily News. MONDAY, DECEMBER 18, 1922. THE BANK OF NEW ZEALAND.

The statement made by the ehairman of directors of the Bank of New Zealand (Mr. George Elliott) at the half-yearly meeting on Friday will doubtless be read with considerable interest. Apparently the tide of huge profits which for some years past has been flowing into the bank’s coffers has commenced to ebb, but tbs bank is in a position to pay away in dividend?, for the half-year the respectable sum of £225,000. What its gross profits amounted to is not disclosed, no statement of accounts being submitted to the shareholders. That these profits must have been large may be gleaned from the fact that “fall provision has been made for all known and probable losses,” and there is no doubt that the reserve fund has again been strengthened, besides other usual allowances being deducted from the gross profits. The chairman devoted the greater portion of his remarks to the task of attempting to justify the high rates charged by the bank, and to verbally castigate those politicians—and others—who dared to criticise the bank’s methods of policy during the recent electioneering campaign. A careful perusal of the manner in which he presented the case for the defence will probably lead to the conclusion that it was more labored than convincing. While asserting that the bank does not resent fair criticism, but objects to wilful misrepresentation “through the suppression of known facts,” Mr. Elliott resorts to a very old method of pouring contempt on his critics by advising the public to remember that “the criticism of inexperience is necessarily of little value, and should therefore be largely dis counted.” There is an old legal maxim to the effect that a lawyer having a bad case, should abuse the other side. Mr. Elliott certainly refrains from abuse, but when , he characterises the critic--isms on the bank’s methods as due to inexperience, he virtually asserts that no one outside the banking circle knows anything of banking methods and business, and, by inference, assigns ' such critics to the class “who rush in where angels fear to tread.” It may be confidently asserted that there are far more people possessing a fair knowledge of banking than Mr. Elliott realises, and that there are certain outstanding features of this business which so intimately concerns the producers, as well as those engaged in trade and commerce, that it has become part of their duty to become acquainted with, and to closely follow', the extensive and far-reach-ing ramifications of finance, even though they may not be bank directors. Mr. Elliott’s cheap sneer at his critics was certainly as undeserved as it was out of place. Had his ease been irrefragible, he would have taken the chief criticisms one by one and proved—if he could —their fallacy, instead of which he brushed them all away with a wave of the hand, and entered upon a diffuse statement of the evils attached to “paternalism in Government,” nationalisation of industries, and ethics of exchanges, and the patriotic—almost philanthropic—policy of the bank in keeping up the high rates of interest, lending freely at these high rates, “even up to the limit of the bank’s resources,” in order, to get back to normality, by weathering the storm. The banks have the whip hand every time, and practically the whole of Mr. 'Elliott’s arguments were an emphatic justification of the demand for a producers’ and development bank that was not so much concerned with making profits and paying high taxation in I return for Government protection, I as in advancing the welfare and prosperity of the country and its energetic citizens.