About
Who are the employee shareholders?
They are a group of around 200 employee and former employee shareholders who are suing FNZ Group in the New Zealand High Court for US $4.6 billion.
The group includes cofounders of FNZ and represents the second largest shareholder group in FNZ, owning around 23% of the company’s ordinary equity, which they funded themselves through a buyout in 2009.
Who is FNZ?
FNZ is a global financial technology and services company that partners with the biggest names in finance across the world. More than US$2 trillion in retail pension and investment assets are administered on the FNZ platform.
FNZ’s shareholders are some of the largest institutions in the world including the LaCaisse, which manages pension plans and insurance programs in Quebec, the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB) and the Singapore government’s investment arm, Temasek, as well as private equity firms Generation Investment Management (chaired by Al Gore) and Motive Partners, where FNZ’s CEO Blythe Masters is a founding partner. Each of these institutional investors hold at least one seat on the board.
Why New Zealand?
FNZ was founded and is legally registered in New Zealand, which means the company must comply with:
• The Companies Act 1993
• Requirements of the Companies Office
• New Zealand tax law
Background to the claim against FNZ:
The last publicly available valuation of FNZ was in 2022, prior to the equity raises at the heart of the class action. Back then, FNZ’s valuation was approximately USD $20billion. Therefore the estimated value of shares held by employee shareholders bringing the class action was approximately USD $4.6 billion.
Equity raises conducted in 2024 and 2025 were issued to the institutions who hold seats on the board as preference shares, delivering a 300% return on capital invested, in preference to employee shareholders.
In addition to these preference terms, institutional shareholders also issued themselves warrants that diluted the common equity of employee shareholders even further.
Employee shareholders who are bringing the class action claim these transactions were approved by directors who carried conflicts of interest in relation to the benefits they provided themselves. They also allege the transactions were carried out without regard for the fair value of the company’s equity.
Finally, these capital raises and their impact were not disclosed to the affected employee shareholders until six months after the first two of three raises had occurred. The documentation had to be amended by FNZ at least four times due to errors and the view that it did not provide adequate disclosure for retail investors.