Lawyer building class action over Penrich failure
Investors in failed Cayman Islands hedge fund Penrich — a list which includes the exclusive Diocesan School for Girls and what is understood be to a cluster of richlist families — are being urged to contact lawyer Adina Thorn over a planned class action.
Penrich, a boutique investment firm which was frozen in March over a “significant discrepancy” and is now being investigated by the Serious Fraud Office, and its subsidiaries are in liquidation in three countries.
Penrich’s flagship Global Macro Fund claimed to have $400 million under management, but allegedly forged audit reports have cast serious doubts over its scale, its true activities and where investors’ funds actually ended up.
Thorn, an Auckland insurance lawyer with a track record in organising class actions — having previously taken cases against James Hardie and Auckland Council over leaky homes, and for investors in failed education provider Intueri Education Group — said she had personally invested in Penrich, was a member of its creditors committee, and wanted to marshall others in a similar position in order to assess legal options.
“I think there are serious issues about professional advisers and directors,” she said.
Thorn said news in March that not all was as it seemed at Penrich came as a shock: “When I found out about this, and the scale of it all, I was pretty upset. I feel really let down by lots of professionals.” She said Penrich, which had billed itself as making bets on interest rate and foreign exchange movements, was obvious as a disaster only in hindsight.
“It had an impressive website. The documents are impressive, the names were impressive. And actually it was really just a few guys running around in Christchurch running a very dodgy structure in the Cayman Islands. It was completely different from the marketing,” she said. “It blows my mind, actually. A lot of people affected here are of retirement age, and it’s totally unacceptable to take away their retirement funds. It’s sickening.” Investors in Penrich are understood to largely be a cluster of rich-list families based in Auckland and Christchurch, and face losses estimated to run to tens of millions of dollars.
Last week the Weekend Herald revealed that Penrich’s founder Kelly Tonkin, a former Treasury economist and Lehman Brothers investment banker, was back in his hometown of Christchurch pleading poverty and awaiting the outcome of the SFO investigation.
Thorn said investors interested in joining her planned class action should make contact at her office at Adina Thorn Lawyers.
The documents are impressive, the names were impressive. And it was really just a few guys . . . running a very dodgy structure in the Cayman Islands.
Adina Thorn (left), lawyer