Prime Minister John Key says no recommendations were made to Cabinet that the Government should take up any offers to buy South Canterbury Finance.
Documents released by the Treasury on Thursday show offers were made to buy the troubled finance company but were not taken up by the Government.
Mr Key says none of those were presented to Cabinet as they were all rejected prior to that point.
He says that was because of complications in the bids or a belief that they didn't present value to the Crown.
Meanwhile, official papers show the Treasury favoured a competitive sale process for South Canterbury Finance.
A number of unnamed parties approached the Treasury in August about buying the South Island lender with Government support.
That included a consortium involving George Kerr, whose Torchlight Fund had lent money to South Canterbury Finance.
That deal suggested a 50/50 joint venture, with the lure of access to up to $1 billion in private capital.
The Government been criticised for not selling the business and limiting its losses, which now stand at $1.1 billion.
The details of the offers have been blanked out, and whether the Crown could have received a better deal than its current position is unknown.
But the papers appear to indicate Treasury preferred a competitive tender process for selling any assets if South Canterbury Finance failed.
That is partly because all the proposed offers left the Government holding the worst of South Canterbury's bad loans, and the fear was that cost could have ballooned considerably with little flexibility to minimise its exposure if it also held the good assets.
