Bid backlash

Press, 13 March 1986, Page 26

Bid backlash

By NZPA staff correspondent,

CHRIS PETERS

Sydney As corporate raids by Mr Robert Holmes a Court and Mr Ron Brierley, the New Zealander, shake the foundations of the Australian business world, evidence emerged yesterday of a shadowy group of executives drumming up a backlash. Rumours have been rife for some weeks that a corporate club of senior company executives is in existence, and the group has even been given a name by the investment community — Australia 2000.

According to reports in Sydney, the club has been formed to head off take-overs by buying up shares in target companies themselves. That was given substance by Mr Andrew Turnbull, the managing director of Burns, Philp and Company, Ltd, who told reporters that top executives of major companies were being approached at discussion groups and cocktail parties to band together in an attempt to repel takeovers.

According to the “Sydney Morning Herald” yesterday, Mr Turnbull, while announcing his company’s half-yearly profit, said this week that he had been approached at vari-

ous functions to join the defensive club.

People had circulated at functions which he attended and displayed diagrams showing proposed cross-link-ings and had explained how the defensive club worked, he said.

The Burns, Philp management had decided there must be some catch to it and, in spite of the club believing his company was a potential takeover target, they turned the membership offer down.

Confirmation of the club’s existence comes in the wake of some spectacular coups and attacks in recent months, highlighted by Mr Brierley’s drive for "establishment” corporations, Australian Gas Light and North Broken Hill, and Mr Holmes a Court’s dramatic raid on "the big Australian” Broken Hill Proprietary Company, Ltd (BHP), which now has every chance of success.

Now • that Mr Holmes a Court is set to close his attack on BHP and with the big packaging and glass multinational, ACI International, Ltd, complaining about Equiticorp Tasman, Ltd, the New Zealand-based group, “Australianising” moves to get around foreign investment regulations in its take-over bid, the point has become even sharper in the business sector.