IEL takes stake in Allied Mills

Press, 7 February 1985, Page 26

IEL takes stake in Allied Mills

PA Wellington Brierley Investments’ Australian subsidiary, lEL, has wrapped up a 19.9 per cent shareholding in one of its biggest take-over targets, Allied Mills, Mr Russell Goward, lEL’s chief executive, said in Wellington.

The deal was tied up last Friday, and meant that under the terms of the Australian take-over code, lEL was out of the market for the next three weeks, he said. ! •

Allied Mills has a tie-up with the Arnotts biscuit group, the joint owner (with the Goodman Group) of Aulsebrooks biscuits in New Zealand.

Mr Goward said there had been rumours that Goodman’s had been buying shares to protect Allied Mills, and to knock out the opposition. The deal to complete the 19.9 per cent stake had been done at $3.25 a share, compared with the bid of $2.75 a share.

He said the tie-up with Arnotts gave lEL the chance to buy, “into two organisations for the price of one”.

lEL was determined to continue buying Allied Mills

shares, till it reached a 60 per cent holding, he said. The chairman of lEL, Mr Ron Brierley, announced in early January that lEL was bidding for 44.2 per cent of Allied Mills in a bid which valued the big group at sAust2B7M.

Mr Goward, who was visiting Wellington for an Industrial Equities Pacific, Ltd, board meeting, said lEL was reaching the stage in Australia where it was about to face a change of direction, and become more like the Brierley Investments operation in New Zealand. Four other successful corporate rationalisers were operating in Australia, and the scope was narrowing. In five years, lEL would have got to the position that BIL had reached in New Zealand, where it had become a corporate investor, using its expertise to help the profitability of the major companies in which it held shareholdings, he said. lEL would also be using more of its expertise overseas, in investments in the United States and elsewhere, where the prospects, for growth were much greater.