Examiner agrees to merger of Crown-Dalgety

Press, 1 October 1983, Page 20

Examiner agrees to merger of Crown-Dalgety

The planned merger between the pastoral companies, Crown Consolidated, and Dalgety NZ, has been agreed to by the Examiner of Commercial Practices, according to the Crown chairman, Mr Rod Weir. The agreement is subject to certain conditions to which both companies have agreed, he said. The Examiner, Mr P. E. Donovan, apparently told the companies yesterday. The merger is now subject only to consent by Crown shareholders at a meeting on Wednesday, and to changes in the company’s articles of association, Dalgety shareholders need to advise acceptance of a take-over offer mailed 11 days ago. Mr Donovan last week

delayed decision on the merger, which will rank the joint company with Wrightson NMA as New Zealand’s biggest stock and station agency, saying that he needed more advice from the companies. In his announcement that consent has been given to the proposed merger of Crown Consolidated and Dalgety NZ Ltd, the Examiner of Commercial Practics, Mr Donovan, noted that certain conditions have been accepted by the companies, after the request of Federated Farmers, said Mr W. R. Storey in Wellington yesterday. These conditions related to fair access of competing firms to sale yards, tying other services to the provision of finance to farmers,

and withdrawal from collective pricing agreements in the industry.' Agreement to these conditions will meet most of the concerns raised by fanners when the merger proposal was first announced, said Mr Storey. The future of Dalgety’s Hawke’s Bay Farmers, and Crown Consolidated in the Hawke’s Bay area is also clearer and more acceptable, he said.

“Now that approval of the merger had been given I would restate my hope that all farmer clients will seek shareholding in the new company. This will seem to be the most sensible way of ensuring that the new. company is receptive to the needs of its farmer clients,” said Mr Storey.