26 November 2013
Human nature is a magnificent thing, and this is one of the best examples I've seen of how fickle humans really are.
Lane Walker Rudkin had been one of this country's most successful-ever clothing companies, and probably the biggest. Built on the back of the Canterbury range, it had a worldwide presence, and was bought by James Anderson in 2001.
Almost immediately, the company hit severe trouble, losing its major customer to cheap Chinese imports. At that stage, most businessmen would have thrown the towel in, called for the receivers and tried to minimise the damage to their own finances.
Not so James Anderson. Call it misplaced pride or sense of self-worth, but whatever it was, Anderson decided to falsify the accounts of his business, misrepresenting the situation to Westpac Bank to allow the company to continue trading. For three years, Anderson kept the company going, retaining the 300 staff that would have lost their jobs on the closure, when it should have been closed in 2004. Thanks to Anderson's deception, the company kept trading for another four years, consistently increasing the debt to the stage where the total was over $100m and the deficit was around $70m.
The presiding judge at Anderson's trial stated that he was certain the $70m had been used to keep the company afloat rather than Anderson in luxury, and there is no doubt Anderson personally lost everything as well.
It seems to me that if we take the wage bill for 300 people at a very low average of $40,000 pa, that will give us a total of $12m per year. Over the space of four years that Anderson continued to dupe Westpac, I figure the wage bill at an absolute minimum of $48m, the vast majority of the $70m deficit.
Accordingly, you'd expect Anderson's biggest supporters to be the wage-earners who he kept employed for an extra three years - after all, they benefitted from the fraud, while Anderson did not.
Yet those wage earners were actually the people baying loudest for Anderson's blood. A selection of comments are contained in this article.
Biting the hand that fed them.
I have no dog in this fight, have never met James Anderson and am not trying to defend him - what he did was wrong and stupid, but he's not an evil person in my book. Sure, Westpac lost $70m, but when they cream a billion a year from NZ in profits, I'm not going to cry for them.
Copyright © Alan Charman