Allied Farmers will issue shares to Hanover investors today

Hanover investors will be issued their new Allied Farmers shares after 6pm today, and trading will start at 10am on Monday.

Allied Farmers, which yesterday secured the support of all four Hanover investor groups at a vote in Auckland, will need to issue more than 1.93 billion shares to the Hanover investors.

Yesterday, brokers were fielding inquiries from Hanover investors who had never before held shares.

They were wanting to know what to do about the shares and how they could sell them.

Forsyth Barr broker Peter Young said Allied Farmers shares opened yesterday at 19c, fell to an inter-day low of 13c before rising to 15c.

Nearly 880,000 shares were traded, which was not a large number, but was considerably higher than the 50,000 a day traded before the bid by Allied Farmers for the assets of Hanover.

"There has been a bit of panic selling, but to have a market you need buyers, and someone sees some long-term value in Allied shares."

There were fewer than 50 trades made during the day with some parcels of more than 100,000 shares changing hands, Mr Young said.

It would be interesting to watch the market when the new shares became available for trading.

Brokers spoken to by the Otago Daily Times believed that the price would fall further once Hanover investors tried to sell their shares and get some cash back.

A Hanover investor with $200,000 invested with the failed finance company would receive 966,000 shares.

Allied Farmers managing director Rob Alloway said a big challenge lay ahead now that his company has secured Hanover Finance's assets.

"To be honest, I worry more about what we buy than what we don't buy and I'm a lot more worried now than I was before the vote," Mr Alloway said.

"We have a very long, hard road ahead of us to fulfil all the promises we've made to investors and we've pledged to those investors to do our very, very best.

"I'm very confident in the future of our finance business. We've been around for 30 years now, it's been through perhaps the toughest time that the finance industry's ever seen in the world and this only serves to strengthen it further."

Hanover principal Mark Hotchin said the deal was the best opportunity for investors.

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