MISSING MILLIONS: Bendigo Adelaide Bank is chasing debts. 03 Dec, 2009 09:23 AM THE Bendigo and Adelaide Bank remains committed to chasing defaulting Great Southern customers within the laws of debt collection, despite threatened legal action. This week the Bendigo Bank raised the stakes on its defaulting Great Southern customers, hauling some of them up to the credit rating agency Veda Advantage in a bid to claw back some of the $510 million owed to the bank.
One of the main law firms mounting a class action against the bank, Macpherson and Kelley, lodged complaints with ASIC, reported its actions to the Office of the Financial Services Ombudsman and gave the bank until 2pm yesterday to remove listings with Veda or be formally reported to the Privacy Commissioner for allegations of a breach of the Privacy Act.
Macpherson and Kelley also threatened to take action for any loss or damage suffered by a client from a listing with Veda.
Bendigo Bank head of investor relations Will Rayner said the bank had ignored the deadline and would continue to press its case for payment of outstanding money.
“We argue that we have complied fully with all of our obligations under the Debt Collection guidelines.”
Mr Rayner said of the many law firms representing customers, Macpherson and Kelley was the only one “tampering” with the bank’s communciation.
“We will continue to act within accordance of the debt collection guidelines, which is what we argue very strongly we have been doing all along.”
Bendigo Bank did not lend money directly to Great Southern or any of its subsidiaries, but over the past six years has lent more than $550 million to 8200 customers who had invested in managed investment schemes through Great Southern.
These loans are full-recourse to each individual borrower, which means they are secured by woodlots - and if the bank can’t get all of its money through a sale of the plantation trees or woodlots, it faces the messy and risky task of having to chase down each investor and get them to repay their loans individually.
GTP Price at posting:
12.0¢ Sentiment: None Disclosure: Held
