Business
Adler was appointed Chief Executive by the board of FAI after the death of his father in November 1988, at a time when the company was struggling with a number of loan exposures to troubled companies such as Bond Corp and Ariadne in the wake of the October 1987 stock market crash. FAI had largely stabilised by the time the company became the subject of a takeover bid from HIH in September 1998. HIH had done no due diligence on FAI, but bid nevertheless. Total acquisition cost was A$280 million in cash and HIH shares. HIH subsequently sold assets out of FAI including its life insurance company, the St Moritz Hotel in New York and shares in the telecommunications company One.Tel to raise about A$450 million.
After the FAI acquisition was completed Adler became a director of HIH in January 1999. HIH was already in trouble as a result of underprovisioning for claims over many years, and it accumulated large losses in the Lloyd’s of London insurance market and in the US which eventually brought about its collapse in March 2001.
In its final months, as HIH attempted to sell assets to raise much-needed cash, it succeeded in selling the FAI business it had acquired less than two years previously into a joint venture with Germany’s Allianz Group. HIH and, subsequently the HIH liquidator, raised A$320 million from the sale of the ongoing FAI business.
In September 2000 around the time of the announcement of the Allianz joint venture, Adler persuaded the HIH chief executive at the time, Ray Williams, to provide $10 million of HIH’s money to allow him to invest and ostensibly make money for HIH. One of the investments Adler made, through a trust called Pacific Eagle Equities, was HIH shares at a time when the HIH share price was falling sharply. The investment was a poor one, as the price continued to fall. Adler resigned as a director of HIH in January 2001. He was subsequently charged, tried and jailed for two and a half years over breaches of his director’s duties.
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