Chase Corporation was a

property development Real estate development, or property development, is a business process, encompassing activities that range from the renovation and re-lease of existing buildings to the purchase of raw land and the sale of developed land or parcels to others. R ...

company in New Zealand that flourished in the 1980s, became devalued in the 1987 New Zealand stock market collapse, and eventually collapsed in 1989.

History

Chase Corp had a major effect on the New Zealand economy, starting out in the 1970s with small property developments, becoming an extremely large player in the New Zealand commercial property market in the 1980s. In the early 1980s, Chase Corp operated as a

corporate raid In business, a corporate raid is the process of buying a large stake in a corporation and then using shareholder voting rights to require the company to undertake novel measures designed to increase the share value, generally in opposition to t ...

er, taking over companies whose shares they thought were under-priced, and then either '

asset stripping Asset stripping is a term used to refer to the practice of selling off a company's assets in order to improve returns for equity investors. In many cases where the term is used, a financial investor, referred to as a 'corporate raider', takes cont ...

' or restructuring the company. Launching itself as a publicly listed company in April 1983, Chase Corp's share price rose to a high of $10.40 by June 1987, with an estimated value of NZ$3.6 billion. Chase Corp was one of the largest companies on the New Zealand share market. At the end of 1986 Chase Corporation was one of the largest three listed companies in New Zealand (along with

Brierley Investments GL Limited is an investment company listed on the Singapore Exchange. Founded as Brierley Investments in 1961, it was formerly listed on the Australian, London and New Zealand exchanges. History Brierley Investments was founded by Ron Brierley i ...

and

Fletcher Challenge Fletcher Challenge was a multinational corporation from New Zealand. It was formed in 1981 by the merger of Fletcher Holdings, Challenge Corporation and Tasman Pulp and Paper. It had holdings in construction, forestry, building, and energy, init ...

). Chase Corp also invested in Australia, England and the United States of America. After the New Zealand sharemarket crash on 20 October 1987, the Chase Corp

share price A share price is the price of a single share of a number of saleable equity shares of a company. In layman's terms, the stock price is the highest amount someone is willing to pay for the stock, or the lowest amount that it can be bought for. B ...

continued to drop and it effectively never recovered from that point, as the New Zealand property market collapsed. On 4 July 1989, the NZ Government appointed statutory managers to run the NZ property interests of Chase Corp. The company was formally wound up in July 1996.

Leadership

The Chairman of Chase Corp (as it was commonly known) was Colin Reynolds, with other Directors Peter Francis, Adrian Burr, John Clarke and Seph Glew. In April 1985, Colin Reynolds and Seph Glew featured on the cover of the magazine 'Metro' as the 'darlings of Queen Street'.

References

{{reflist Defunct companies of New Zealand Financial services companies of New Zealand