February, 06 , 2010

Financial pressure may have contributed to the disappearance of a senior company executive after his firm wrote off $175 million in the recession.Grant Atkinson, 48, the chief risk officer with Marac Finance, left for work in Auckland from his North Shore home on Tuesday but failed to arrive and has not been seen since.Yesterday his black Holden car was found in a rural area north west of Auckland but there was no sign of Mr Atkinson.

Sharebroker Chris Lee said Mr Atkinson was well respected in the finance industry but the recession had taken a toll on many senior executives."He has a family, he is a decent man," he told the Dominion Post newspaper."He is not a ratbag.Mr Lee said the past two years had put a lot of pressure on people in the finance industry and many people had lost a lot of money. In November last year, its parent owner, Pyne Gould Corporation, reported a loss of $54.4m, largely caused by $175m of bad property development loans by Marac.

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