Holt promises last bid to pay creditors

By Jock Anderson

Friday 8th September 2000

Harry Holt

Cash-crippled Cambridge developer Harry Holt won a brief court reprieve this week after promising to settle with a gathering band of irate creditors.

Mr Holt and his second wife, Christine, are behind the stalled $12 million development of a luxury health resort, The Phoenician of Cambridge, on the shores of Lake Karapiro (NBR Jan 28, June 9 and Aug 11).

Mr Holt claims to have sold 29 of 45 planned Phoenician units - a variation of timeshare cum unit-title investment - for $213,000 each, promising investors 10% returns and free nights.

But investors cannot secure title - and presumably Mr Holt cannot get paid - until he spends $80,000 making proper road access to the site - a condition of the project's resource consent.

In the meantime, contractors have repossessed materials and downed tools awaiting payments.

Last month in Hamilton High Court, Master John Faire accused a company owned by Mr Holt, Parkway Construction, of running fast and loose with its creditors.

Master Faire ordered the liquidation of Parkway Construction and an associated Holt company, Nighthawk Developments, with debts between them of at least $88,000.

The Holts used Parkway Construction to buy 60 acres of land for the ambitious health resort project, onselling it with mortgages of nearly $900,000 to another Holt company, Phoenician Management.

This week applications to liquidate an associated company, Christchurch-registered Parkway Investments, jointly owned by Mr and Mrs Holt, were adjourned until October 2 to allow a settlement proposal to be put to creditors.

If there is no acceptable proposal Parkway Investments will be liquidated.

The Holts borrowed money and used Parkway Investments, Parkway Construction and Nighthawk Developments to build houses in Te Awamutu, Cambridge and Karapiro.

Liquidation of Parkway Investments was sought by Auckland couple Dennis and Vera Orme (owed about $320,000), supported by M R and B J Jones; J W Ashby and R F Craig as executors of the estate of Edith Spencer; and R F Craig solicitors nominee company.

In a separate action chartered accountants Gosling Chapman also sought Parkway Investments' liquidation.

Action by Hamilton law firm Norris Ward solicitors nominee company to recover about $600,000 of clients' money from Mr and Mrs Holt personally was adjourned by Master Faire for a December 7 hearing.

Representing the Holts and their companies, lawyer Joe Hamblett of Cambridge firm Osmond Harris, said they hoped to settle and settlement proposals would be made.

It is understood creditors may be owed about $1 million.

Meanwhile, in an unrelated case, the fate of Cantab Investments, originally set up by Osmond Harris senior partner Ronald Thomas Osmond, hangs in the balance following an application to have it liquidated being adjourned by Master Faire until today.

Master Faire adjourned the case to allow Cantab shareholder and disbarred former lawyer Murray Athol Osmond to make a promised $4000 part payment on a $13,000 GST debt.

Murray Osmond, a business associate of Mr Holt and a Phoenician Management shareholder who helped prepare Phoenician's resource consent application, was disbarred in 1998 after being jailed for stealing clients' money.

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