Twelve months from incorporation to liquidation
Guardians of Gold Limited lasted less than a year under its sole director Andrew Hollis. Incorporated in September 2024, the company ran three retail stores, bought and sold bullion and scrap jewellery, and in 2025 claimed around 5,000 customers with ambitions to expand into Australia and Europe. On August 29, 2025, it was placed into voluntary liquidation. Receivers from Waterstone Insolvency were appointed days later by secured lender Mayfair Finance.
The financial picture at that point was brutal. The company held just $26,190 in cash against total creditor claims exceeding $670,000. The shareholder account was overdrawn by $86,750, meaning Hollis had drawn more from the business than he put in. Mayfair Finance was owed $250,420 as a secured creditor. Inland Revenue held a preferential claim of $33,861 in unpaid PAYE and GST. Employees were owed $12,773 in holiday pay. And 45 unsecured creditors had filed claims totalling $388,150 by March 2026, though the original September 2025 report identified 85 known creditors with a note that the actual amount was “significantly higher.”
All of this unfolded while gold prices were at historic highs, making the losses sting even more.
A missing gold bar and the illusion of protection
The sharpest case involves a retiree who in August 2025 sold a 5oz gold bar worth approximately $26,390 to Guardians of Gold just days before liquidation. Under the Secondhand Dealers and Pawnbrokers Act 1908, goods must be held for 14 days before being on-sold. The company went under before that period expired and before the retiree was paid.
She assumed the 14-day rule meant the gold was still legally hers. The receivers disagreed. The gold bar’s location is unknown.
In September 2025, Waterstone’s Damien Grant acknowledged that gold was held across multiple locations, more people were claiming gold than actual gold available, and records were not in sufficient state to confidently allocate physical assets to claimants.
The case now sits before the High Court. A February 2026 application seeks directions on approximately $250,000 worth of bullion inventory where 34 unsecured creditors have competing claims. The first hearing is scheduled for May 25, 2026.
Still trading in the final hours
Creditors described a company that kept taking money and assets right up to the end. In September 2025, the NZ Herald reported one creditor saying: “I am horrified and disgusted that he sold me the silver despite knowing the impossible financial situation he was in.” Another purchased $4,669 of silver less than 48 hours before liquidation was announced. Three unsecured creditors filed police complaints.
Hollis, a former Tauranga City councillor removed in late 2020 when the Government replaced the council with appointed commissioners, now faces 35 tax-related charges spanning income tax evasion, GST evasion, and providing false information for Working for Families credits. He has not yet entered pleas. MBIE confirmed he faced no legal impediment to starting new businesses when he incorporated Guardians of Gold.
The regulation that doesn’t exist
This is the structural problem. New Zealand’s bullion trading sector is not regulated as a financial service. Dealers do not need a financial service provider licence. They are not required to segregate customer funds or assets from general business inventory. There is no minimum capital requirement, no fit-and-proper director test, no dispute resolution or compensation scheme.
The governing legislation, the Secondhand Dealers and Pawnbrokers Act 1908, mandates a 14-day holding period on purchased goods but says nothing about asset segregation or insolvency treatment. It was written more than a century before modern precious metals trading existed in its current form.
The practical consequence is blunt: a customer who hands over a $26,000 gold bar to a bullion dealer becomes an unsecured creditor the moment that dealer fails. They rank below the secured lender, below IRD, below employees. The 14-day rule that many customers understood as a protection provides no meaningful shield in insolvency.
What every business owner should take from this
The Guardians of Gold case is extreme, but the risk it exposes is not unique to gold. Any business or individual that places physical assets with a counterparty that is not a regulated financial institution faces the same structural vulnerability. Bullion, art, wine, stored inventory – the asset sits on the counterparty’s balance sheet, commingled with general inventory, available to secured creditors first.
The practical checklist is short. Conduct due diligence on counterparty financial health before depositing high-value assets. Understand whether your contract establishes a property right or merely a contractual claim. Check whether the Personal Property Securities Register can secure your interest in specific goods. And recognise that trust, however sincere, has no legal force in insolvency.
The May 25 hearing will determine who gets the remaining bullion. It will not fix the regulatory gap that made this possible. There is no indication the Government is considering legislative change. Until it does, the rules are simple: if you hand someone your gold and they go under, you are just another name on the creditors’ list.
Sources
- Newsroom: Gold trader owned by controversial ex-councillor tipped into insolvency (2025-09-15)
- Newsroom: Investor’s gold goes AWOL in contentious councillor’s bullion bust (2025-09-18)
- Newsroom: Court to determine who has right to gold caught in trader’s collapse (2025-12-05)
- NZ Herald: Guardians of Gold – Tauranga ex-councillor Andrew Hollis’ company in liquidation and receivership (2025-09-19)
- NZ Herald: Former Tauranga City councillor Andrew Hollis charged with 35 tax-related offences
- Companies Office – Guardians of Gold Limited (2025-09-05)
- New Zealand Gazette – Notice of Appointment of Liquidators (2025-09-01)