Tuesday, February 8, 2011

Underthinking Terry Serpisos

So today I was reading this story about Terry Seripisos, the owner of the Wellington Phoenix.

Where he got a mythical bird is anyone's guess

Anyway apparently owning mythical animals is an expensive exercise, and Terry is having a little trouble keeping up with the bills. Probably all that money on keeping the existence of the Phoenix low enough to maintain mythical status.

"There is no such thing as a Phoenix"

 It is quite appropriate that Terry has a mythical creature, because he works in an industry that works in things that don't exist.
Terry Serpisos wealth is calculated on mainly assets, he will have hardly any liquid wealth I would imagine.

Liquid Wealth


Property developers get really rich based on wealth that doesn't exist, they buy properties with the banks money, do them up a bit and then flog them off for a profit, and keep the profit and pay the bank back. So they are making money off the loans the bank give them. There is nothing wrong with this in principle, they are adding new property to the country. Most of the time though they just slap some paint on some run-down buildings to increase the profit they make on top of the loaned money.

Loan- $6000, Land - $5000,  Timber $200, labour free knocked it up myself on the weekend sell for $50000 - Profit on that.
Terry though apparently decided that there was an easier way to make more profit, you just don't pay a lot of bills. Easiest area to cut out bills, Taxes. I mean its not like Taxes are important or anything. Terry owes $3.5 million in back taxes.
That's quite a lot really, no wonder he is so rich, I think I will stop paying Tax too...

Get Rich Quick - Don't pay tax

So the problem is Terry wants the IRD to hold off plans advertise the fact they want to liquidate his assets to pay these taxes, so that he can go and get loans to pay off these bills.
The reason for this is apparently banks aren't so liberal at loaning money to people who have trouble paying bills, because despite popular belief debt eventually has to be paid back.

THEY ARE JUST GIVING TV's AWAY FOR FREE


So Terry obviously doesn't want the banks to know he can't afford things, so they can give him money to afford things.
What happens though when he has to repay this debt though just find some more money to pay those debts and the cycle continues?
I mean if he thinks he has enough assets to service his debt, why doesn't he pre-emptively liquidate himself, so that he can clear debt and be able to procure loans more easily to rebuild his mythical kingdom.

Where Property developers live.

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