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Story: Business failures and corporate fraud

Occupational status of bankrupts

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As this graph indicates, in the early 1950s a high proportion of bankrupts were people who ran their own businesses – so their bankruptcy was usually a result of a business failure. By the 1980s a smaller proportion of bankrupts were business owners, and more were employees or unemployed people who ran into financial trouble from excessive personal spending.

Using this item

Te Ara - The Encyclopedia of New Zealand

Source: New Zealand Official Yearbook

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How to cite this page

Graeme Hunt, Business failures and corporate fraud – Personal bankruptcy, corporate failure and fraud, Te Ara – the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, https://teara.govt.nz/en/graph/22326/occupational-status-of-bankrupts (accessed 4 June 2026).

Story by Graeme Hunt, published 13 January 2010.

Comments

Anne
26 July 2012
Are you adding more to the story about the Finance Property Developer collapse 2006 - to 2012. It would appear reading this whole story we have not learned the lessons of those early land speculations and continue the collapse story.