you mentioned presumably walking away from investments such as...

you mentioned presumably walking away from investments such as the minority share in the unlisted mis wine grape growing investment business.

I am unaware of any arrangements which could require iwi to put further funding into those investments or to guarantee any debts to banks or others, which are owed by those unlisted investments of which iwi is a minority investor in.

hope you are correct , but i remember the previous evans & tate and reynolds wine debacles.

in the reynolds wines insolvency wash up, everyone was chasing the directors and iwi happened to have had a nominee as a director on the reynolds wine board and it cost iwi unitholders heavily in lawyers and other costs in addition to writing off completely the reynolds wine investment. It seems that the directors & officers liability insurance and publc liability insurance policies did not fully cover all risk exposures that iwi had .

there are further interesting precedents coming up in storm financial, great southern and timbercorp, which may apply if and when the mis tax punting investors start alleging all sorts of misrepresentations, other shonky deals etc and get class actions going if they are not properly compensated by the companies or if insolvent by the directors or their insurers.

Hope that this was not occuring in the mis wine grape growing investment business and that iwi is not caught up in any way if the loans taken out by the mis investors are somehow deemed unenforceable or if the bankers which financed the loans claim back off the mis business.

if iwi is standing behind any director in the mis grape growing business, i hope that the directors and officers and public liability insurance policies held by iwi prove to be fully adequate.

re the capital gains tax issue expect a lot of the struggling small riverland iwi unitholders did not have other realised capital losses and will not be impressed with having to borrow funds to pay the capital gains taxes.

possibly the iwi chairman may care to comment.