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South Canterbury Finance has appointed three new independent directors to its board, including former PGG Wrightson chairman Bill Baylis. The other two appointments are Stuart McLauchlan and Denham Shale. (Update 1 includes McLauchlan-Delta link.)

McLauchlan is also a director of Delta Utility Services, the Dunedin City Council-owned electricity services provider which bought 100 sections at Jacks Point in Queenstown earlier this year.

The new directors replace Stuart Nattrass and Bob White who resigned from the board earlier this year.

Here is the statement from South Canterbury:

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South Canterbury Finance announced a NZ$67.8 million net loss after tax in the year to June 30 2009, which was much deeper than its indication in July that it would make a net NZ$37 million loss for the financial year. South Canterbury also said it had called in advisers to assist it with a capital restructuring and had breached its covenants for bank loans it had not used.

“(A)s the economy transitions from recession, there will inevitably be additional stress in some sectors,” Chairman Allan Hubbard said.

“To provide further for those events, the group has acted conservatively and increased the provision for non-performing assets in the financial year to 30 June 2009 and created a general collective provision,” Hubbard said.

South Canterbury wrote off NZ$16.5 million in bad debts in the year to June 30, 2009, which was up from the NZ$10.4 million written off in the 2008 financial year. It also increased its impairment allowances to NZ$49.1 million from NZ$8.6 in million 2008. Impairment of shares and investments rose by NZ$2.7 million to NZ$5.8 million in 2009.

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