Date set for Gear special meeting

Press, 7 January 1982, Page 16

Date set for Gear special meeting

An extraordinary meeting of the Gear Meat Company, Ltd, has been called on January 28 to authorise increasing the capital, issuing shares to Brierley Investments, Ltd, and changing the name of the company, the directors announced yesterday.

The purpose of the meeting was to increase the capital of the company from SSM to 510 M and to ask the shareholders to give the directors authority to issue to Brierley Investments 2,659,000 ordinary 100 c shares at par, they said.

The second reason for the meeting was to change the name of the company to Huttons N.Z., Ltd: Shareholders at the annual meeting had been told that the directors have contracted to purchase the whole of the business of J. C. Hutton (N.Z.), Ltd for a cash consideration, they said.

“This company, which has worked in New Zealand as a subsidiary of its Australian parent for about 80 years will, we think, give the Gear Meat shareholders a revival

of profits and give the company the ability to pay shareholders dividends on their capital in the near future.”

The change of name from Gear Meat Company was designed to avoid confusion with the company’s previous business in Petone, which was sold to the Hawke’s Bay Farmers Meat Company, Ltd.

The directors, who included representatives of the Hawke’s Bay Farmers Meat Company and Brierley Investments, were convinced that the proposed moves were in the best interests of shareholders and they recommended that the appropriate resolutions be passed so that the company could continue to prosper and give the shareholders the benefit of their investment.

In Sydney, the failure of the National Companies and Securities Commission’s legal move to force Industrial Equity, Ltd, to make a full bid for Huttons, Ltd, placed the ball squarely back before the Committee of the Stock Exchange of Sydney, according to AAP.

The judgment by Mr Justice Needham in the New South Wales Supreme Court on December 30 effectively prevented the commission from taking any action against IEL.

This leaves the matter to the stock exchange committee, which will meet this week, to consider the options in its wrangle with Mr Brierley, the chairman of lEL and Brierley Investments, who is considered to be one of Australia's most astute corporate raiders.

The court refused to enforce the business rules of the Stock Exchange, which governed corporate activity and responsibility, before the new companies and securities legislation became effective in July.

Sources said the Victorian Corporate Affairs Commission may have grounds for criminal prosecution of Brierley and lEL for breaching the state’s legislation covering the acquisition or shares. But they said such an action was unlikely to proceed after the commission’s failure in the Supreme Court.