More than 10,000 clients of CA Pacific Finance and CA Pacific Securities will be forced to wait for about six months before provisional liquidators will be able to provide a clear picture about the chances of recovering their investments. Coopers & Lybrand partner Denis Ho, who was appointed along with partner Jan Blaauw as a provisional liquidator at both firms, said they would provide an interim report to the court on their progress in six months. He described the task ahead as a difficult one, given the complexity of the relationships between the operations, transactions and financial and accounting records between the two companies. He anticipated many legal problems arising from these relationships. 'One of our jobs is to protect the assets of the two companies and the interests of the clients and creditors,' he said. 'We will also study thoroughly the financial position of the two companies.' But it was too early to tell how much of their investments clients would be able to get back, he said. Information provided by the two companies suggests CA Pacific Finance had 9,000 clients while the brokerage had about 2,000 but it was unknown how many overlapped. Mr Ho said they would investigate if the securities arm had cashed in clients' shares as collateral for loans as some reports have suggested. The provisional liquidators had not been notified about any parties interested in buying the firms, he said.
