After years of enforced silence, Forsyth Barr boss Neil Paviour-smith talks to Tim about Credit Sails.

NEIL PAVIOUR-SMITH is keen to talk. Four years after the failure of a financial product lead-managed by his firm, a $60 million settlement has been announced to compensate investors, and Forsyth Barr’s managing director wants to set the record straight.

As we install ourselves in the conference room of his Shortland St offices in Auckland, PaviourSmith moves to the window and raises the blinds. ‘‘It’s a bit dark in here,’’ he says. He’s friendly and polite, smiling a lot. His cufflinks are silver bears.

In an hour he’ll be off to an Employment Relations Authority hearing to defend his sacking of convicted road rage analyst Guy Hallwright and his breathing seems a little short at times, perhaps in anticipation of the grilling.

Or perhaps it’s suppressed anger. Forsyth Barr copped huge criticism for its role in the Credit Sails debacle, whipped up by a fund manager from Wanaka, Greg Marshall, yet stayed virtually mute through the whole affair – silenced, says Paviour-Smith, by the Commerce Commission process, obligations to its insurer, AIG, and ‘‘strict confidentiality agreements with Credit Agricole’’.

‘‘We still don’t believe we misrepresented the investment.’’

‘‘We still don’t believe we misrepresented the investment,’’ he says. ‘‘We get the anger and frustration of investors who lost money. We were doing stuff [to get a solution], we just weren’t able to come out and tell everyone what we were doing and put everything at risk.’’

Measure us by the outcome, says Paviour-Smith several times, emphasising what counts is that investors will get 85 per cent of their money back.

‘‘We . . . have delivered through a large amount of effort and patience a really good outcome for investors.’’

You can’t doubt PaviourSmith’s sincerity, but investors are