Talk:Pyramid Building Society

What did the depositors get back?

In these days of bank failures, I'm interested in knowing: What money did deposit holders get back after the collapse? As the Victorian Government was $900M out of pocket, I assume that they got something, but what was it? cojoco (talk) 03:28, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

@Cojoco: While looking for sources for this very poorly referenced page I found Final cheque in the mail for Pyramid depositors from 15/03/2005 which says "The 18,000 depositors in the Pyramid Building Society had $1.21 billion invested and received $614 million, a return of about 51 cents in the dollar." --220 of ^Borg 02:43, 9 February 2015 (UTC)

No the original DEPOSITORS got their money back (at 100% of the face value of their deposits valued at June 1989 but not including any interest since then) by mid 1995. I think the 51 cents in the dollar was referring to the non-withdrawable shareholders, who originally were going to get nothing but after legal action got 51 cents. EliseMooneyPlagiarist (talk) 08:33, 8 October 2024 (UTC)

Media representations and consequences for ALP

Not sure if this is significant enough to include, but Pyramid became legendary in Victoria and the rest of Australia, and subsequently many dodgy financial firms inspired by Pyramid began to appear in TV, films, and literature. One of the cheekier ones is Obelisk, an very clear Pyramid analogue in the second Murray Whelan novel, The Brush-Off, by Shane Maloney. Obelisk is a shaky building society offering unusually high interest that collapses in the closing chapters of the novel (owing in part to a fictional scandal involving Obelisk funds being invested in art collections that turned out to be forgeries). There were lots of other examples - TV sketch comedy had a field day, with Fast Forward in particular running a lot of jokes about it.

Also, there isn't much in here about the consequences for the ALP, which were seen at the time as deeply involved in Pyramid. When it went down, a lot of people held the state ALP responsible, and it was a major factor in the Liberal party, headed by Jeff Kennett, being swept into power a few years later. 49.193.215.141 (talk) 12:45, 18 February 2016 (UTC)

"Subsequent Events"

I'm not sure this paragraph ties into the rest of the article well.

Farrow's continuing mismanagement of money is newsworthy/relevant, but is it really related to Pyramid?

I would be more convinced if the paragraph explored how Farrow continued to hold a director's licence if he continued to be financially shaky. This would then tie in to the previous story. 194.223.4.117 (talk) 02:25, 29 October 2023 (UTC)