[Weekly wrap] Botherway's mission complete

Since he sold Brook Asset Management to Macquarie in 2008, Botherway has taken on a number of short "fix-it" jobs where he goes in with a clear objective, gets it done and then moves on.  Before his ANZ Wealth role Botherway was in charge of the FMA establishment board; he also had a brief stint as a director of the DNZ Property Fund and was on the board of the former Securities Commission.

It will be interesting to see where he ends up next.  Botherway carries a clean reputation, has a history of shareholder activism and has not presided over any destruction of investor wealth (unless you count what happened to Macquarie's investment in Brook since he left).  With Adam Feeley about to leave the SFO, the government could do much worse than Botherway as his replacement.  

Whoever becomes the next SFO boss, he or she will have to deal with what Feeley has described as a growing trend towards "affinity fraud", such as the Ponzi scheme run by Jacqui Bradley and her late husband Mike.  Bradley has this week been found guilty on all 75 charges brought by the SFO relating to $15 million swindled from investors, who were told their money was going into government bonds and other fictitious investments.  In reality, it was paying off other investors and funding the Bradleys' lifestyle.

Following the jury's unanimous verdict, Feeley made the observation that, with investors losing trust in the financial system after the finance companies, they are more vulnerable to being duped by supposed "friends".  It would also be naive to think that the new financial adviser regulatory regime could stop this type of fraud.  People such as the Bradleys are capable of ticking all the boxes and passing all the right exams and still ripping people off.