The case of the Liberator Permanent Building Society, now in
liquidation, threatens to turn out an exceptionally bad one. The Society was practically a bank of deposit, with deposits exceeding three millions, mostly made by poor persons who expected their deposits to be used in lending money to build houses. So they were, but it appears that they were lent at the directors' own discretion, and that it seemed. to them wise to lend £3,423,000 to three speculative building firms, receiving in return mortgages, usually third charges, upon the buildings those firms pat up. These build- ings are many of them splendid properties; but the firms are in "liquidation ; " there are two sets of creditors who will rank before the Liberator, and the Official Receiver gravely fears that nothing will be recovered. It is useless, he told a meeting of shareholders on Monday, to talk of reconstruc- tion, "for there is nothing to reconstruct." The Reserve Fund of £90,000 is a mere paper asset, and the valuations of the pro- perties, which were the Society's " securities," are worthless.
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