Funds Management clients seek 'spy' answers

Friday 30th November 2001

More than 100 New Zealand Funds Management clients have besieged the company in a panic following corporate espionage at its Auckland headquarters.

Spies breached high-tech security at Downtown's ANZ Centre, eluding security guards and videotape to steal confidential client information from NZ Funds' 18th-floor office.

NZ Funds principal Gerald Siddall said since NBR broke the story last week, staff had fielded at least 50 phone calls a day from concerned clients.

Its advisers and subsidiary company were also deluged by investors worried their money was at risk because of the espionage, which yielded names, addresses, account holdings, bank accounts, logins and passwords for all its financial advisers.

NZ Funds had written to 25,000 people explaining exactly what records were pillaged from the company database, he said. "The records that were taken are actually records of NZ Funds' subsidiary NZ Administration Services," he said. "It was copy of data and we seem to have been able to explain it in a way that people feel comfortable with."

- Nick Smith

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