PHOTO: SUPPLIED Taranaki dairy farmers Bill and Sharon Coomey have been fighting New Zealand’s biggest bank, ANZ, for half a decade to recover up to $10 million of business losses and additional interest payments.
Newsroom’s Nikki Mandow tells the extraordinary story of the Taranaki dairy farmers who unwittingly got caught in the world of high finance, got shafted by ANZ Bank following the global financial crisis, refused to take a Commerce Commission-brokered settlement because it was worth only a tiny fraction of what they had lost, took the country’s biggest bank to court – and, against the odds, won.
Sharon Coomey’s Facebook page doesn’t have a whole lot of content. Over five years there are perhaps a couple of dozen posts. Proud pictures of the grandchildren on the farm, Coomey looking glamorous at a family wedding, a photo gimmick from a cancer fundraiser, a selfie with husband Bill sticking his tongue out at the camera.
And then halfway down there’s something totally different. A shot of a bank building and a 2017 Stuff article headlined “Interest rate swaps cause more headaches for ANZ as farmers sue for $7.5 million”.
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