I hope the Securities Commission knew what they were doing when they asked the Minister to inflict statutory management on Alan Hubbard and his wife.

Watching TV One coverage yesterday evening was very sad – especially the Timaru Herald headline :Hubbard in Fraud Probe".

If the Hubbards are indeed solvent and the problem is just a paperwork muddle, those who have brought down headlines like that on Mr Hubbard should feel ashamed of themselves. There is law that can sort out that kind of thing without calling in the SFO.

If  the government has seen fire in the smoke we shall know in due course, but it was not reassuring to have the Minister solemnly citing an investor's complaint that he had not had an investment statement as the trigger for all this. Diddums.

We've got a major securities law refview underway partly prompted by dawning recogntion of the uselessness of investment statements and much else of the paraphenalia of offering law. I wonder how long that investor had been investing with Hubbard without investment statements?

Nor did it seem necessarily germane to me that there are related party loans from Aorangi to the Hubbards and their businesses.

I thought that related party investment was exactly what most of those investors wanted. They wanted their money alongside Alan Hubbard's, in his businesses, because he was so successful.

Normally I would be with Bryan Gaynor in deploring related party lending. Usually it is a breach of the expectations of investors. In this case it was the whole point, from what I've heard from South Island friends.