Its ramifications extended into all corners and affected all classes. Within New Zealand there were 1300 shareholders, liable for nearly three-quarters of a million of money. The bank had 95 branches or agencies in the colony, and they dealt with 25,000 accounts. The bank held the money of 35,000 separate depositors, whose deposits amounted to nearly four and a half millions sterling. Its discount accounts represented traders’ acceptances, equal to £600,000. It had granted thousands of overdrafts, and the Government was its creditor to the extent of £825,000.
There were many of its clients who could have found accommodation elsewhere, but they belonged to the better-off classes. If the bank had closed, men who were doing well in business, but were not rich, would have been completely ruined; many promising enterprises would have been crushed; and the colony’s industries would have suffered to such an extent that years would have passed before they began to recover. The locking up of the money of 35,000 depositors would have caused dislocation of business and loss. Among the depositors was the Auckland Savings Bank, with about £60,000 at its credit in the bank. The trouble would not have stopped with the Bank of New Zealand, and a banking crisis, on the scale of the financial disasters in Australia, was impending.
The depression had passed away, but the colony still felt its effects, and in some directions felt them very severely. The fall of a large banking institution would have precipitated the colony into the depression again. The public revenue would have been seriously affected, the unemployed would have become clamorous, and the colonists, thoroughly disheartened by this fresh trouble, would have needed all their courage to meet the emergency.
There had been whispers among financiers that something might happen. Nothing had been said openly, but those who had opportunities for knowing, and who observed the signs, were alive to the fact that the bank was in an embarrassed position. There were very few, however, who believed that it was actually contemplating closing its doors, and the revelations came to Mr. Seddon and Sir Joseph Ward like a lightning flash.
