The Sydney Morning Herald and The Daily Telegraph have today gone to town on former HIH Insurance CEO Ray Williams, creating a feeding frenzy of talkback anger that will no doubt lead to attacks on the family home in Seaforth, pictures of which have been plastered all over the papers.

This Janet Fife-Yeomans comment piece in The Tele was particularly spiteful.

The calls have been coming in from radio stations this morning requesting more outraged comment, but I’ve been trying hard to put things in perspective.

Ray Williams was the founder of HIH Insurance who built up a personal fortune worth about $50 million when the company was booming – as it did for many years.

When it all went pear-shaped, there are a few things to remember:

  • He didn’t run, like Skase.
  • He didn’t get off on a technicality, like John Elliott.
  • He didn’t avoid jail altogether like insider trader Steve Vizard or cartel merchant Dick Pratt.
  • He didn’t sell shares on the way down, like so many of those Enron scoundrels.
  • And, most importantly, he didn’t salt away millions in far flung tax havens, like Alan Bond.

Like Bondy, Ray Williams has gone bankrupt, but the residual creditors are thought to be chasing $3-$5 million, not the $1 billion that our most notorious corporate crook PERSONALLY owed.

Sure, there is an issue about a couple of arguably preferential payments to his wife, Rita. One involved about $750,000 in superannuation, but super assets are usually protected in collapses.

Williams is bankrupt, banned for 10 years and did 1000 days in jail. The $8 million Mosman mansion is gone, as is the 26 ha estate at Gwandalan on Lake Macquarie.

There is a nice looking house in Seaforth which The SMH today valued at $4 million, yet The Australian’s business editor Andrew Main, who wrote the book on HIH, told ABC radio this morning Rita Williams bought it for $1.3 million in 2003.

The Ferrari that “John the neighbour” has been widely quoted on is a fiction and when you start dragging the property of Ray’s children into the equation you need to remember facts such as his daughter marrying into the Bing Lee retailing empire.

You also need to remember that on 22 September, 2000 – just five months before the liquidator was called in – Ray Williams informed the ASX  that he’d bought an additional 250,000 ordinary shares and 19,200 convertible notes.

He didn’t sell any of his 12.22 million shares before HIH went into liquidation on 15 March, 2001, even though he was forced out as CEO with a $5 million payout, he never pocketed it, instead just joining the long line of creditors.

Contrast that with Rodney Adler who sold all his HIH shares before quitting the board with this statement on 26 February, 2001.

No wonder Adler felt obliged to shell out $7 million to cover a compensation order for Williams that the two of them copped. Ray just doesn’t have the cash.

HIH falling over caused more pain than any other Australian corporate collapse, but these things need to be kept in perspective. Today, we’ve seen too many cheap headlines and not enough facts.

Today’s Mayne Report video takes The AFR’s front page specie stock picking onto the new Sky Business Channel.