A former Bridgecorp investor whose angry letter helped convict three of the company's directors today says he hopes Rod Petricevic's prison experience gives him a taste of what investors have been through.

Bridgecorp collapsed into receivership in July 2007 owing $490 million to 14,500 investors, after issuing an investment prospectus containing false and misleading statements in December 2006.

Petricevic and two fellow former directors, Rob Roest and Peter Steigrad, were convicted in the High Court at Auckland this morning on Crimes and Securities Act charges.

LAWRENCE SMITH/Fairfax NZ PETER STEIGRAD: On a court-approved European trip part way through home detention sentence.

Petricevic and Roest were denied bail to see their waiting friends and family, and are now in custody awaiting sentencing hearings on April 26 and May 17 respectively.

Justice Geoffery Venning said imprisonment was "inevitable" for the pair who were convicted on all 18 charges.

Crown prosecutor Brian Dickey said outside court that he would be "seeking a substantial term of imprisonment - more than has been seen so far in similar cases from the recent finance sector collapse".

ROD PETRICEVIC: Guilty.

The charges carry maximum penalties of five years in prison and fines of up to $300,000. The trial has spanned six months in the High Court.

Former investor William Fair said a prison sentence would ''certainly please many people'' and would be a lesson to other finance company directors who were yet to face the courts.

"I hope that Petricevic has an experience in jail similar to the experience he's inflicted on thousands of investors," Fair said.

Fair had sent a letter to Bridgecorp when an interest payment he was due from the company came three days late.

He pointed out their obligation under the prospectus to pay promptly on the last working day of the month and requested his investment money - "a few thousand dollars" - be repaid to him.

Fair was told the late payment was due to a "computer glitch" - a lie which Justice Venning judged Petricevic to have promoted as the cause for such delays.

His letter was used by Crown prosecutors during the four-month trial to show the lengths the directors were willing to go to hide the deteriorating financial position of the company.

While Fair managed to get his money out of Bridgecorp at that point, he said investors should have the basic knowledge required to spot when a company is not meeting its obligations.

Another investor, Don Jefferies, said he would rather have more of his money back than see Bridgecorp's directors sent to prison.

"They were robbing Peter to pay Paul," said Jefferies.

'I am pleased that [Petricevic] has been found guilty because that justifies a lot of the hype.

"All of the publicity before they went into receivership said that basically everything will come right, Bridgecorp will be there, and I'd been with Bridgecorp for years and there was that element of trust."



The New Zealand Shareholders Association has described the actions of the convicted directors as "callous", saying "remorse is not a word they understand."



Chairman John Hawkins compared the verdict to recent trials of other finance companies where judges have been at pains to state directors were not intentionally misleading.



He said said Bridgecorp was "in a whole different league to the other recent cases."



"These were not the actions of people who were well meaning, but inept. Rather, there was deliberate and knowing suppression of the problems facing Bridgecorp for the express purpose of continuing to be able to extract funds from the public," he said



Hawkins hoped a civil case was brought against the directors to recover money for investors who had their live "ruined" by the collapse of the company.



"Unfortunately, they probably have most of their assets in trusts and it may be difficult to enforce any orders the court makes," Hawkins said.

A third director, Peter Steigrad, was convicted on only six charges and bailed to travel between New Zealand and Sydney where he had "particular personal circumstances" to attend to.

He will also be sentenced on May 18.

Two other directors, Gary Urwin and Bruce Davidson, earlier pleaded guilty to the charges. Davidson was sentenced on October 7, 2011 to nine months' home detention, 200 hours of community work, and payment of $500,000 reparation. Urwin will be sentenced on April 17.

The alleged untrue statements included that the company had never missed an interest payment, it had provisioned enough money in its accounts for loans which might not be recovered, and omitted mention of the related-party nature of a substantial loan relating to a development in politically unstable Fiji.

The Crown alleges that investors were lied to about the reason for late and missed payments of interest and principal on their debentures between February and July 2007, and the inability to pay investors should have triggered a breach of the trust deed and initiated a closer look at Bridgecorp's financial position as early as mid-February.

Justice Venning rejected the defences of Petricevic and Roest that the prospectus statements were immaterial or that they had reasonable grounds to believe the statements were true.

"I have found that both Mr Petricevic and Mr Roest knew, at the time the offer documents were registered in December 2006, that Bridgecorp faced a number of adverse circumstances and that its liquidity position was mis-stated.

"I have also found that they knew from February 7, 2007 that Bridgecorp had missed payments of principal and interest due to investors."

Justice Venning also found that a central transaction to the collapse of the company - the Barcroft transaction - was to a related party but that this was not declared in the prospectus.

The Financial Markets Authority has welcomed the guilty verdicts. The Serious Fraud Office has also laid charges relating to these companies. These are scheduled to be heard in September 2012.