First it was The Australian columnist Mark Westfield with a book claiming to give the inside story of the HIH collapse. Now Australian Financial Review journalist Andrew Main has written his own version, “Other People’s Money: The Complete Story of the Extraordinary Collapse of HIH”.

While we’re relying on the opinions of those who have obtained an early copy of the Main book, it is said to make much of the dubious foundations laid by FAI’s founder, Larry Adler.

The author says Larry Adler started FAI in 1960 with £7500 capital, “because he saw insurance as the perfect cash cow to finance an investment empire”. He achieved it by investing in high-growth, high-risk stocks.

John Palmer, the Canadian expert called in by the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority in 2001 to review its role in the HIH collapse, was critical of then Treasurer John Howard’s 1978 decision to allow FAI to operate. “FAI’s assets were found to be inadequate, but Howard was persuaded to issue a trading licence on the condition $800,000 was injected into the company.” The author says Mr Howard “has never chosen, between 1978 and now, to explain what particular arrangement he came to with Larry Adler”.

And he contends that “almost everything about Rodney Adler’s situation… is a consequence of his father’s actions, or views, or both. Rodney knew in 1988 [after his father’s death] that FAI was held together by string and bale twine and he spent the next decade trying in vain to make it look like a serious insurer.”