IEL suspension to continue

Press, 15 January 1982, Page 10

IEL suspension to continue

PA Sydney. The committee of the Sydney Stock Exchange has maintained its suspension of Industrial Equity, Ltd, after a request for the delisting of the company by the lEL chairman (Mr R. A. Brierley). In a release the exchange's chairman (Mr Frank Mullens) said that lEL will remain suspended “until such time as a suitable unconditional offer is made for the remaining shares in Huttons, Ltd.Mr Mullens said the committee does not propose to remove lEL from the official list “at this time.”

The decision responds to a letter sent to the exchange by Mr Brierley. He described the suspension as “very unsatisfactory" and requested delisting unless the quotation of lEL shares was restored by the morning of February 2. The exchange committee has responded after considering a New South Wales Supreme Court judgment, handed down in the last week of 1981, on lEL’s controversial share dealings in the Melbourne-based meat processor.

lEL agreed in July last year to go ahead with a formal take-over offer but withdrew it and refused to proceed with it in September. lEL was subsequentlysuspended for breaching listing requirements.

The National Companies and Securities Commission took legal action to force lEL to make a full bid for Huttons. Mr Justice Needham ruled that lEL was not liable to proceed with the bid because an lEL subsidiary, Conquip Sales Pty. Ltd, bought the shares, and subsidiaries of listed companies were not at that time subject to the relevant requirements of the Sydney Stock Exchange.

In the release Mr Mullens said that the committee acknowledged this point but saw the situation differently.

“The fact remains that a wholly-owned subsidiary, namely Conquip Sales Pty, Ltd, did purchase 27.6 per cent of the shares in Huttons, Ltd, and it is undeniable that these parties were acting in concert in relation to the acquisition,” he said. “The exchange, in administering the listing requirements. looks to companies to

comply with the spirit as well as the letter of those listing requirements."

In his letter to the exchange. Mr Brierley queried the committee's failure to respond quickly to the Supreme Court judgment. "There has subsequentlybeen two weeks of unexplained dithering by the exchange," he said, which was most unfair to small shareholders who had been deprived of a market for lEL scrip. The Industrial Equity chairman said that he understood that the committee had resolved to resume quotation of lEL shares but had been overruled by the NCSC. He said the commission was “conducting something of a vendetta in this matter. “It is quite disgraceful that this situation arises as a consequence of the NCSC refusing to abide by the decision of the Court and using the Sydney Stock Exchange as a’ puppet to evade responsibility for its action," Mr Brierley said.

He said that the matter must be brought to a conclusion and he formally requested delisting lEL shares if the exchange did not lift the suspension.