NEW ZEALAND

Equiticorp Founder Guilty of Fraud: The founder of collapsed New Zealand investment company Equiticorp, Allan Hawkins, was found guilty Friday of seven fraud and conspiracy charges on transactions totaling $270 million. The verdicts were delivered to an overflowing courtroom in Auckland after three weeks of deliberation on the 111-day trial. Hawkins, 51, was found innocent on four of the 11 charges he faced. He will be sentenced Jan. 6. Hawkins founded Equiticorp in 1984 and built it into the fifth-largest company in New Zealand before its collapse in 1989. His dreams fell apart during the 1987 New Zealand stock market crash, which revealed the billions of dollars of debt Equiticorp had accumulated and the convoluted deals used to hide the company’s true condition.