New Zealand

Allan Hubbard fund investors paid out

20:28 pm on 1 September 2015

The statutory managers of an Allan Hubbard investment fund say all the money investors put in has been returned.

In a statement released today, Grant Thornton Statutory Managers said investors in the Hubbard Management Funds had received $35.6 million, which repaid all original capital, along with a small surplus pool.

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The statutory managers were appointed in June 2010 following a fraud investigation.

Mr Hubbard died in a car crash near Oamaru in September 2011.

Statements prepared by Mr Hubbard in March 2010 indicated the more than 200 investors were owed $82.8 million.

The statutory managers said the accounting records did not back that, and they had assessed the fund's value at $47.7 million.

They said they followed an exhaustive and slow process of reconstructing the financial records of every investor to enable the money to be returned.

Investor Noel McPherson said the news was bitter-sweet, and that the statutory managers had done a poor job of selling off its assets.

Investors had been given back what they put into the fund but had missed out on potential investment returns, he said.

"We haven't had the use of that money for that period of time, hence we haven't been able to take advantage of the significant surge the sharemarket has made over the last two-odd years so that's very disappointing."

Many investors were hoping to use the money for things such as school fees and had suffered due to it being frozen, Mr McPherson said.