Orange Finance stops raising money (Updated)

Orange Finance has stopped taking new investments, Money Managers has confirmed. (Updated to include Money Managers confirmation and Covenant Trustees confirmation). Orange Finance is owned by Doug Somers Edgar, the man behind the Money Managers investment advice chain. The Sunday Star Times reported that Money Managers had stopped referring clients to Orange Finance, shutting down a primary source of new money. A spokesman for Money Managers told interest.co.nz Orange Finance had stopped accepting new money about 2 weeks ago and therefore Money Managers had stopped referring investors to Orange Finance. However, Orange Finance's website still has a copy of its prospectus on its site and is advertising its rate. The last public accounts for Orange Finance were for the year six months to the end of September 2007 and show it owed NZ$64 million in debentures, although a third of its loans were "expired" and not repaid. Over three quarters of its lending is for residential investment and its 6 largest loans were worth almost 60% of the book. Orange Finance has yet to file its accounts for the year to the end of March 2008 with the companies office. Its last prospectus extension was on December 19 last year and said then nothing had materially changed from its March 2007 accounts. Orange's Trustee, Covenant Trustees, also confirmed that Orange had stopped raising new money. Covenant Managing Director Graham Miller told interest.co.nz Orange continued to repay debentures as they fell due and was making interest payments. We will update this story with comment from Orange as we get it. We have left a message for Doug Somers Edgar to return our call.