Wellington, April 18 NZPA - Kiwi Finance Ltd became the 18th finance company in under two years to go to the wall when it was placed in receivership.

More than $2 billion has been invested in the 18 companies, but some of that has been repaid by the receivers.

The following is the chronology of the company failures:

* May 2006: National Finance 2000 went into receivership, holding deposits of $25.5m on behalf of 2026 investors, some of which has been repaid.

* June 2006: Receivership was seen as best way to protect the interests of Provincial Finance debenture holder, who had invested $300m, some of which had been returned to them.

* August 2006: Tauranga-based Western Bay, owing more than $48m to investors, went into receivership. Debenture holders have recovered some of their money.

* July 2007: Specialist property financier Bridgecorp went into receivership, after defaulting on repayments of some term investments due to investors -- owing about $500m to 18,000 investors.

* August 2007: Nathans Finance went into receivership, owing $166m to around 6000 investors. Nathans was a wholly owned subsidiary of vending technology company VTL Group Ltd which announced it was insolvent due to a Companies Office investigation of Nathans.

* August 2007: Property Finance, which has debentures of over $80m and loans of over $630m, went into receivership reporting it was in deep trouble and unlikely to be able to honour its debts.

* August 2007: Five Star Consumer Finance collapsed, with receivers PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PWC) saying big loans in its $51m lending book were "outside normal lending practices". Its prospectus showed it owed $57.6m at March 31, 2006, in various dated debentures and had lent out $68.7m.

* September 2007: LDC Finance Ltd trustee Perpetual Trust called in PWC as receivers after a run on its funds. Its 995 depositors and debenture holders were owed $19.3 million.

* September 2007: Nelson-based car finance firm Finance and Investments was placed in receivership with PWC by principals Andrew Harding and Murray Scholfield, owing 370 investors $16 million. Finance and Investments received funding from LDC.

* October 2007: BDO Spicers were appointed receivers to Auckland-based financier Clegg and Co Finance. Clegg had around $15m of 500 investors' funds in debentures. Covenant Trustees said Clegg's trust deed had been breached to a "significant extent".

* October 2007: Auckland-based Beneficial Finance secured agreement from debenture holders for a moratorium on debenture payments. It had investors' funds of $24.2m at the end of March 2007.

* October 2007: Geneva Finance stopped taking deposits and put a moratorium on repaying debentures. It owed about 3000 creditors over $138 million.

* November 2007: Capital+Merchant Investments was placed in receivership, owing about $190 million to 7000 investors. Capital+Merchant Finance and Capital+Merchant Investments breached general security agreements with Australian company Fortress Credit Corp.

* December, 2007: Numeria Finance went into receivership with 480 debenture holders owed $6.7m.

* February 2008: MFS Pacific Finance, a unit of publicly listed MFS New Zealand, announced it had defaulted on loan repayments after its Queensland-based parent, MFS Ltd, said it would not provide further support. MFS Pacific was holding more than $325m invested by 12,000 New Zealanders.

* February 2008: MFS Boston, indirectly owned by MFS Ltd, called for a stay in redemptions from its $38.5m investors' funds until November 2009.

* April 2008: Lombard Finance and Investments, a wholly owned subsidiary of publicly listed Lombard Group, was placed in receivership. Lombard was seeking a moratorium on its loans -- $111m owed to debenture holders and $16 million to holders of subordinated notes and subordinated capital notes.

* April 2008: New Plymouth-based Kiwi Finance Ltd placed in receivership on April 15.

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