NZF acquires shareholding in Finance Direct

April 2 2007

 New Zealand Finance Holdings (NZF) acquires shareholding in Finance Direct Limited.

New Zealand Finance Holdings (NZX:NZF) today announced (April 2 2007) that it had acquired a 51% controlling stake in Finance Direct Limited.

Says John Callaghan, managing director of NZF, “We have been assessing many opportunities to further grow our business and we chose to go with a quality company in the consumer market. We thought it made more sense to look for a clean, well-run company that needed an injection of capital so we could move it to another level.

“Finance Direct is an exceptionally well established consumer based financial organisation. Its co-founders have solid and lengthy experience in the sector. The company is well-skilled in matching its client’s needs to appropriate lenders. It has a reputation for adopting a conservative approach to lending and any loans that don’t meet its criteria are brokered to a more appropriate lender to minimise the Company’s risk.

“Buying into Finance Direct allows us to further diversify our product base and range and it also means another range of products for our substantial distribution network. Finance Direct has developed flexible and innovative methods of borrowing for people wanting to buy property, consumer goods/debt consolidation or marine, something until now we didn’t offer our customers” added Mr Callaghan.

Says Murray Greig, Executive Director of Finance Direct, “The impact and industry fall out of the last 12 months in the finance industry has meant that to achieve our growth plans joining up with NZF made sense. We have something to offer NZF particularly since we are a large provider of business to non-bank lenders. We have good systems and our ‘lifecycle’ approach to lending has resulted in strong relationships with our clients.”

NZF has purchased a 33% stake in the company for $925,000.00 and injected further capital of $500,000.00 into it to achieve a 51 % controlling interest. The company has the option of acquiring the balance of the shareholding in Finance Direct to gain total control within four years.

When asked about his perception of the finance sector John Callaghan commented that,” We predict that there will be further rationalisation in the sector over the next twelve months and that the bigger players will get stronger as people search out quality that they can rely on and trust.

Ends

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