Six companies in the Rangiora-based Chance Voight investment group have been placed in liquidation by the High Court, which found the group was insolvent and had been running an unsustainable business model that leaned on fresh investor money to keep paying the people already on its books.
The decision, issued on Friday, followed an application by the Financial Markets Authority, which asked the court to appoint liquidators to Chance Voight’s parent company and five of its core subsidiaries. The companies now being wound up are Chance Voight Investment Corporation, Chance Voight Investment Partners, CVI Securities, CVI Partners Mortgage Income Fund, CVI Financial and CVI Partners Mortgage Fund.
The court heard the regulator’s application on 29 June and delivered its judgment this week. In its ruling it found the group was reliant on money from new investors to meet existing obligations and was unable to pay its debts as they fell due, according to RNZ, which reported the outcome.
“Our primary goal in bringing the liquidation proceeding was to ensure the preservation of investor funds to the extent possible,” the FMA’s head of enforcement, Margot Gatland, said. “The Court’s judgment confirms the FMA’s concerns about the management of these companies.”
Gatland said the court found that the companies, with one exception, were insolvent, and that the evidence was overwhelming. “The remaining company was a holding company that did not trade and was wound up on the basis of a justifiable lack of confidence in its management,” she said.
Chance Voight is a corporate group made up of 27 separate entities. It began operating in 2021, raising money from the public through offers of shares and debt securities and promising returns generated by investments in property and shares listed on the Australian stock exchange. Its founder, chief executive and sole director is Bernard Whimp, a name familiar to many New Zealanders from a run of unsolicited low-ball share offers he made more than a decade ago.
The scale of the hole facing investors was set out earlier this year. An interim liquidators’ report, made public in April, found the group had a negative net asset position of close to $12 million and warned that investors faced a substantial shortfall, as NZ Herald reported at the time. The liquidators found that investor interest, and in some cases the redemption payments handed back to people who wanted their money out, were largely funded by incoming money from newer investors rather than by genuine investment returns.
That pattern, where money from new investors is used to pay earlier ones rather than being put to work as promised, is the classic warning sign regulators look for. It can keep a business looking healthy for as long as new money keeps arriving, but it unravels quickly once the flow slows and redemption requests start to outrun fresh deposits.
Friday’s decision is the culmination of a case that has been building since late last year. The FMA first went to the High Court in December 2025 seeking the liquidation of the parent company and five main subsidiaries, and the court appointed interim liquidators while a full hearing was arranged. That hearing ran over three days from the end of June, and this week’s judgment is the result.
The six companies are unlikely to be the last. The FMA has made a second application to the High Court seeking to liquidate a further 25 entities linked to the group, an action it said followed the interim liquidators’ preliminary findings and its own continuing inquiries. The regulator’s investigation into Chance Voight Investment Corporation, its subsidiaries, and the people and entities associated with the wider group remains open.
For the investors caught up in the collapse, the immediate question is how much of their money can be recovered. The liquidators, from advisory firm Teneo, will now work through the group’s assets and liabilities to establish what can be returned. On the figures released so far, a full recovery looks out of reach, and the reference to a substantial shortfall suggests many will get back only a fraction of what they put in.
The FMA has asked anyone with information about the group to get in touch, and said investors or creditors with questions about their money should contact the liquidators directly. The regulator has framed the case as part of its wider push to hold managed investment schemes to account, and the court’s finding that the evidence of insolvency was overwhelming will strengthen its hand as the remaining applications work their way through the courts.
It is a cautionary tale that lands at a time when many New Zealanders are hunting for better returns than the bank offers. Steady, above-market returns that never seem to wobble are exactly the promise the regulator warns people to treat with suspicion, and the Chance Voight case is a reminder that a polished pitch and a professional-looking prospectus are no guarantee the money underneath is real.
What do you make of the collapse, and has it changed how you think about where you put your savings? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job 🙂
Leave a Reply