Monday, May 27, 2013

So much for "mum and dad investors" II

So, it turns out that National didn't just lie about their investors in Mighty River Power being ordinary kiwis - they lied about them even being people:
The 113,000 so called "mum and dad" investors who bought Mighty River shares earlier this month included companies, trusts and investment institutions Treasury has confirmed.

[...]

Today Treasury confirmed to NewstalkZB that those 113,000 investors, "could include companies, trusts or New Zealand investment institutions that did not wish to participate in the Institutional Offer and so chose to apply through the General Offer".

Treasury's admission comes just a few days after it revealed to the Green Party that half the shares in the retail offer went to just 13,000 investors and 10 per cent went to just 400 who made an average investment of almost $250,000 each.


Again this shows that rather than being a way of spreading wealth to all, National's privatisations were a means to further concentrate it in the hands of the corporate class. They took something which belonged to all of us, and which benefited all of us, and gave it to their donors and cronies. And we'll be paying for that greed for a long time to come.