Is Provident Capital a canary?

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From Banking Day today:

The Federal Court late on Tuesday confirmed the appointment of Philip Carter, Tony Sims and Marcus Ayres from PBB Advisory as receivers of Provident Capital, a Sydney-based finance company. The court had stayed orders first made late last week to allow the company time to appeal.

Bendigo and Adelaide Bank, a secured creditor of the firm, provided $91 million in funding to Provident based on the December 2011 financial statements.

More than 3000 investors are owed $125 million.

In April the financier said it would cease to accept new investments in its debentures.

Three weeks ago Australian Executor Trustees, which supervises the firm’s debenture program, obtained an order from the court that froze redemptions from the firm’s fixed-term investments.

PBB said in an advisory at its website yesterday that “it is appropriate to cease business activities whilst they attempt to work through the issues within the portfolio.”

This includes a suspension of redraws on residential loans along with an end to new lending.

The firm had around 150 loans with a face value of $176 million according to the December 2011 half year financial statements.

Provident incurred a loss of $9.1 million over the half year to December 2011, a loss that triggered intervention by the trustee.

So is this a beginning or and end? In one sense it’s the tail of the mortgage funds blowing up, like City Pacific. Provident lasted longer because of the nature of the debenture funding but when it was going it was surprisingly quick. La Trobe in Melbourne is probably the last of these types of mortgage funders with debentures.

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On the other hand it’s a symptom o what’s happening in developer and risky mortgage lending land. It is warning sign that the slow melt will have its causalities, that risk an acceleration.

About the author
David Llewellyn-Smith is Chief Strategist at the MB Fund and MB Super. David is the founding publisher and editor of MacroBusiness and was the founding publisher and global economy editor of The Diplomat, the Asia Pacific’s leading geo-politics and economics portal. He is also a former gold trader and economic commentator at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, the ABC and Business Spectator. He is the co-author of The Great Crash of 2008 with Ross Garnaut and was the editor of the second Garnaut Climate Change Review.