Tricontinental: The Rise and Fall of a Merchant Bank

The astonishing and alarming story of Tricontinental is also the story of the roller-coaster ride of Australian finance throughout the 1980s.
This book charts what happened inside Tricontinental, from its creation to its collapse. How did it come to be involved with high-risk clients and with entrepreneurs like Alan Bond and Christopher Skase? What led to the increasing involvement of the Victorian government? What happened after the crash of 1987? Why did big businesses, built on expensive credit, crumble, with a thud that continues to reverberate throughout the Australian financial system?
The Tricontinental merchant bank was created in 1969; by 1983 the State Bank of Victoria had a 25 per cent shareholding. Two years later the State Bank acquired the remaining shares. But four years later again, in the wake of losses estimated to be more than one billion dollars, Tricontinental was no more. In 1990 the State Bank of Victoria was sold to the Commonwealth Bank.
Tricontinental is an absorbing and readable account explaining a slice of financial history, the repercussions of which continue to top the nation's agenda. As a cautionary tale, it goes to the heart of vital questions about the extent and methods of responsible supervision of the financial system that shapes our economy.

Hugo Armstrong covered the events of the Tricontinental Royal Commission for ABC Radio and Television and for the Sunday Age. Dick Gross is a lawyer and broadcaster who worked as a solicitor and investigator with the National Companies and Securities Commission.