established South Canterbury Acceptances and South Canterbury Credit Corp by 1960. They acquired South Canterbury Finance (SCF) by 1963 from a group of businessmen including a member of the Todd family. In 1964 Hubbard bought Fanning out, becoming the sole owner. The "originally modest" company began to achieve "real size" after buying Canterbury Finance from Humphrey Rolleston in 1986, in return for a 23% holding in Southbury Group, the owner of SCF and Hubbard's other assets. Rolleston and Hubbard established a series of regional finance companies. Rolleston left SCF in 2004. Hubbard was considered the driving force behind the company's growth as it ultimately became the largest financial institution in the South Island of New Zealand. By the late 2000s, South Canterbury Finance had 35,000 investors and its assets were considered to be worth almost $NZ2 billion. South Canterbury Finance owned 13 companies including fruit packaging and warehousing company Scales Corporation, helicopter and tourism business Helicopters NZ, and a third shareholding in Dairy Holdings Limited, New Zealand's largest dairy farming group. Despite its reputation as a South Island rural lender, South Canterbury Finance made loans to property development throughout New Zealand, Australia and Fiji. At 30 June 2009, property loans were $414.2 million. Real estate lending represented 207 loans with an average net loan value of $1.15 million. Further, 37 per cent of lending was secured by a second or lower ranking mortgages. There were ten property loans greater than $10 million. For some lending, the interest was capitalised into the loan debt, so borrowers did not have to immediately fund interest payments. In June 2010, Allan Hubbard stood down as Chairman of South Canterbury Finance and was replaced by Bill Baylis. On 31 August 2010, South Canterbury Finance asked its trustee to place it in receivership after negotiations over a recapitalisation deal failed. The Government immediately paid out investors $NZ1.6 billion under the Government's Retail Deposit Guarantee Scheme. Alan Hubbard was reported blaming the Government and the other South Canterbury Finance directors for the receivership: as the directors had sidelined him and the Government had placed him in statutory management. On 7 December 2011, the Serious Fraud Office laid 21 charges against five individuals in respect of South Canterbury Finance. The charges related to a variety of allegedly fraudulent transactions which had a total estimated value of approximately $1.7 billion. This included an estimated $1.58 billion from the Crown