About the Trust
Trustees
Trust deed
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History
The case against Kerry Hoggard was taken by shareholders Roger Kerr, executive director of the New Zealand Business Roundtable, Margaret Northcroft and Catharine Franks, and was led by commercial lawyer Stephen Franks. The group decided to take a private shareholder's case after Mr Hoggard bought $635,000 of Fletcher Challenge shares the day before the company's restructuring was announced. The share price rose significantly when the changes were revealed. A Securities Commission investigation found that the Securities Markets Act 1988 had been breached. An out-of-court settlement was reached. The amount of the settlement was such that it was 'abundantly clear' that a court would have found in favour of the consortium of shareholders. You can download the full judgement as a pdf document here. The Trust is incorporated under the Charitable Trusts Act 1957. The Trust's work Since it was formed the Trust has had a number of approaches from parties seeking assistance. It has fully underwritten one appeal, assuring the appellants of cover should they attract an adverse costs award, and made several grants. It has explored the prospects of legal recovery action with several other applicants. In effect it has offered the kind of objective scrutiny that is a feature of litigation funding involvement in a case. The result in those cases has been decisions not to throw good money after bad. After the deaths of founding trustees Sir Ronald Trotter and Roger Kerr the Trust lost momentum. It has recently replaced those Trustees and is again “open for business”. The Trust wants its purpose to be broadly known and has accordingly established this website to explain its criteria and promote its objectives. | ||