A report in Saturday’s Sydney Morning Herald said money invested with US investment firm Lehman Brothers – in the form of complicated collateralised debt obligation (CDOs) – was now potentially worthless.

They listed 100 organisations, including a number of North West councils, which allegedly had millions of dollars in the complicated CDO investments.

Most of the listed councils dispute the figures as highly inaccurate.

Tenterfield Shire Council was listed as having $5.6 million in exposure.

Council’s corporate services director Jim Gossage said the figure quoted was incorrect.

“I don’t know where they would have gotten (the information),” Mr Gossage said.

“We have never had that much invested with them.

“That’s not accurate, council have invested about $5 million with them, and (of that) we’ve taken out $500,000.

“Council still has the money in that we had at the time – it was not with a CDO.”

Mr Gossage said Tenterfield Council had now switched investment strategies.

“We’ve actually got more money invested with bank deposits,” he said.

“The current valuation is less than what we had actually paid for them but we have to record that in our accounts.

“All our investments are still paying quite good interest. It’s just (a question of) whether we get the cash back when they mature.”

Walcha Council was named as having $5.5 million in CDO exposure.

Like a number of North West region councils, Walcha Council general manager Jack O’Hara said the council had lost some of the face value on their investment, but were still receiving dividends.

“Our total portfolio is about one million,” he said.

He did not believe money the council had invested overseas was lost.

“That’s not right. Our understanding is that there’s basically no market at the moment, but we are still getting coupon payments,” he said.

Walcha’s total investment portfolio did not match their alleged $5.5 million exposure.

Mr O’Hara said the council were investigating legal options, but had not made any decisions.