Does Stuff Check Facts?

April 4, 2024

The short answer over the weekend is apparently not.

A Stuff senior sports reporter, David Long, decided he’d delve into the business world of property development company Du Val, and it’s ‘flash Harry’ owners Kenyon and Charlotte Clarke.

Now these two are well known for their version of ‘lifestyles of the rich and famous’ via Instagram… snigger.

Clearly the story on Stuff was just a puff piece, however after all the blah blah blah on the kids and home life stress, the story was in fact quite misleading when it came to the actual numbers.

Check out our email below to Stuff, which we are still waiting for a reply from the senior sports repeater… we mean reporter.

“Hi David,

Just looking for some clarification if I may on your recent story on the Clarke’s & Du Val

From the story …

But Kenyon says 98% of mortgage fund investors who have been offered shares in Du Val Property Group have taken up that offer, and those that don’t, can carry on as they were.

“We’re currently selling $94m of shares and they’re virtually all being taken up by our Mortgage Fund Investors,” he said.

Did you check the facts the Clarke’s told you? As a quick look at the NZ Companies office shows around 81.35% have taken up the share offer, NOT 98% as Kenyon Clarke has stated.

NBR have run a story on this today.

Are you aware that NO new equity has been raised ? As your story (in my opinion) reads like they’ve raised capital, when it’s nothing like that – they have simply converted long overdue debt into an equity position. IE Du Val had this money long ago (not to mention they’ve stopped making interest payments as well leaving investors out of pocket)

I would suggest your story is misleading.

Given that leaves just under 19% of the investors who have not converted into this new scheme, that to would suggest that there are way more than the 1 or 2 that Kenyon Clarke suggests is looking at attempting to liquidate the mortgage fund.

Sadly this looks more like Hanover 2.0, and we all know how that turned out.

I look forward to you clarifying my points as I assume the facts and figures would be at hand from when you checked the various components of the Clarke’s story”.