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// HIGHBANK11 FILES · 22 CHAIRS · ONE BOOK

A BANKING JUDGMENT LAB WORLD

Highbank Universe

Click where you want to be — a door to go in, a roof to read it·← → ↑ space F also work

The street is lighting up

// YOUR FILE CARDS

Walking is the only thing to do out here. There is no score and nothing to lose: a building opens its borrower's entry, the entry opens the file, and a card appears on the shelf once you have judged that file. The whole street is also written out below.

Every case on this site is set in the same world. One bank — never named, because the files never name it — carrying one book of borrowers, where a decision made in one file is still there in the next. This is that world's own record: who has come to the desk, what they asked for, and what the bank did.

It holds published files only. Nothing here runs ahead of what a reader has read: no outcome from a case that has not appeared, no borrower who has not yet walked in. It grows on the day a file is published.

COMPOSITE UNIVERSE

Every business, person and figure in the Highbank Universe is a fictional composite, constructed for teaching. They reflect patterns observed across the author's commercial banking practice. None of them is a real borrower, a real transaction, or a real institution, and no entry here should be read as a record of one.

// THE BOOK SO FAR

Ten businesses, in the order the bank met them. Each links to its own entry, and from there to the file the decision was made in.

  1. ISSUE 01Pacific Premium FoodsSpecialty food manufacturing · North IslandRevenue's grown 50% in two years. Operating cash flow flipped negative. The MD wants more facility.
  2. ISSUE 02Aoraki Trade ExportsPremium food and nutritional exports · Asia-PacificPaid in USD, costs in NZD, asking for a NZ$6m multi-currency facility. The MD won't say which currencies.
  3. ISSUE 03Kauri Dairy HoldingsDairy · two farms · WaikatoThe patriarch is retiring. The bank hears about the succession plan from the accountant first.
  4. ISSUE 04Highview IndustriesPrecision sheet metal · HamiltonSame request as Issue 01 on the surface. A completely different file underneath.
  5. ISSUE 05Meridian LogisticsThird-party logistics · second generationOne customer is now 58% of revenue — and the expansion request is for assets dedicated to that customer. The contract has a 90-day break clause.
  6. ISSUE 06Kowhai Retail GroupHomewares and gifting retail · 14 storesLast Christmas didn't clear. This year's buy is up 22%. The seasonal uplift request is in.
  7. ISSUE 07Coastline Retail GroupListed apparel and footwear · US$240m revenueNPAT up 9%. Operating cash flow down 31%. The dividend consent request is on your desk.
  8. ISSUE 08Basalt Ridge DevelopmentsResidential development · ChristchurchA new-to-bank developer, a claimed 28% ROE and two other banks circling. Your bank has a growth target.
  9. ISSUE 10Fernbrook FoodserviceFoodservice wholesale · two islandsThe paper recommends approval. You found the hole. You're the third vote of five — and the RM outranks you.
  10. ISSUE 11Torrent Bay BottlingContract beverage bottling · private labelA nine-year client brings a competitor's term sheet: 40 basis points inside your pricing, covenant-lite, and a Friday deadline.

// THE BANK

The other constant. It has no name in any file and will not acquire one — what is known about it is only what the files have shown: a credit committee, a relationship manager who brings the paper, an annual review that comes round whether or not anything has changed.

WHAT IS KNOWN ABOUT THE BANK

// THE CHAIRS

A file is not only the bank's. Every published case is also read from the chairs of the people with a stake in it — the founder who signed the accounts, the shareholder holding the stock, the customer whose contract is the collateral. Each borrower's entry lists the chairs its file has been read from.

ALL CASE DRILLS

// WHY A UNIVERSE AT ALL

Because credit judgment is not tested on a single file. It is tested by what the file becomes: the covenant given away in a good year, the guarantee released one season early, the increase approved because the last one was fine. A world where borrowers can come back is the only place that can be shown.

Highbank is published by Highbank Press, which also publishes How Bankers Think. The cases are free and stay free.