Blue Chip threatens gag as Wevers walks

By Duncan Bridgeman

Friday 17th September 2004

Blue Chip New Zealand has threatened legal action over an anonymous letter sent to media following the resignation of chief executive Nick Wevers.

The company's lawyers, top legal aid firm Walters Law, were yesterday instructed to apply to the High Court for an injunction if necessary to prevent allegations in the letter being published.

Partner John Walters, who is also the chairman of Blue Chip, said the letter carried serious defamatory allegations about Blue Chip and its founder, Mark Bryers.

Meanwhile, an angry Wevers will be considering his options after the law firm commented on his departure, which he said breached a confidentiality agreement.

Blue Chip, an Auckland-based housing specialist, gained a backdoor listing on the NZX in June via a reverse takeover of Newcall Group.

The company promotes residential property investment to investors and aims to unlock equity tied up in their existing homes.

Wevers, who resigned last week, said he was bound by a confidentiality agreement and originally would not comment on his resignation other than to say he had left the company to do other things.

However, Blue Chip founder Mark Bryers, who took over as managing director on Friday, said Wevers left because his skills and background were not appropriate for the role.

Walters also said Wevers realised he was not the man for the job and "quite frankly, that is a view which the board had also reached." Blue Chip's board of directors also informed staff of that in an email last Friday.

Contacted a second time, Wevers strongly disputed Bryers' and Walters' comments, claiming that they had breached the confidentiality agreement between the two parties.

"I'd disagree with that of course. I just don't think [the company] was a good fit for me actually."

Wevers' appointment as chief executive of Blue Chip in May this year was met with great fanfare and seen as a coup for the fledgling company.

The former NZI and Marac executive had just spent 12 years as boss of listed Capital Properties, overseeing its transition from Government Property Services. He is widely regarded as one of the country's top commercial property managers.

Wevers said he arrived at Blue Chip with a good reputation and felt he had left with the same.

He said it was a "very interesting" comment that Bryers and the Blue Chip board had made, given the confidentiality agreement between the two parties. He suggested the company was disappointed to lose him.

He would not comment on the state of Blue Chip or any of the allegations being levelled at the company by anonymous sources.

In a letter to NBR, Walters Law said criticism of Blue Chip appeared to have increased since the company went public.

Walters said that before going public Blue Chip was accused of operating a rent-to-buy scheme and was subjected to a thorough investigation by Housing New Zealand, the Companies Office and the Securities Commission.

Walters said the Companies Office produced a report concluding that Blue Chip was not operating a rent-to-buy scheme.

He said the company was sitting on substantial cash surpluses and that all financials were disclosed to the market in a PricewaterhouseCoopers appraisal report before going public.

Bryers said if the company was running contrary to normal it would have been picked up by the auditors.

"Part of what we do and how we do things is very much part of our intellectual property and we don't go around disclosing that to everyone or we'd lose our strength of share."

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