Bridgecorp Holdings

The company was originally listed on the New Zealand stock exchange as Bridgevale Mining and changed its name in 1987, the same year it acquired Toy Warehouse. Bridgecorp Holdings was delisted after the toy company—considered underperforming—was sold in 1992 and went into receivership the same year. Rod Petricevic effectively took control of Bridgecorp after it was delisted. He tried several times to relist the company, but was rejected by the NZX. In 2002, Bridgecorp Holdings was deregistered in New Zealand and moved its headquarters to Sydney, Australia. Bridgecorp Limited served as a subsidiary for New Zealand while Bridgecorp Finance Ltd was established as its Australian arm.

In 2004, Bridgecorp Holdings began trading at Unlisted, a New Zealand-based trading facility. In 2006 the group began reporting the results of the Bridgecorp Limited subsidiary to Unlisted, when it was actually the parent company, Bridgecorp Holdings, whose shares were being traded. In the following three years, the company attracted more than 18,000 investors from both Australia and New Zealand with promised return rates between 9 and 11 per cent a year. In August 2006 Bridgecorp Finance was banned from raising money from existing investors by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission. The commission had issued warnings of "solvency issues" concerning the group as early as December 2005.