Exchange waits on BNZ

Press, 8 July 1986, Page 30

Exchange waits on BNZ

PA Wellington The Stock Exchange would not make a decision on the listing of Bank of New Zealand shares until it had further details and also an application form.

To take it any further at the moment would be purely hypothetical, the exchange’s chief executive, Mr Roger Gill, said yesterday.

The Government recently announced an end to total state control of the bank with the decision

to issue public shares. These would be non-vot-ing shares and the Government would still hold the majority.

Mr Gill said that whether the shares would be listed would depend on the terms of issue. And until a listing application was made it was to early to say what would happen. “All I would say is we would certainly be interested in looking at an application from the bank for the listing of these shares,” he said. There were all sorts of

classes of shares that companies could list. If they were non-voting shares this did not preclude them from being listed, Mr Gill said.

Brierley Investments, for example, had three classes of preference shares listed which did not have voting rights, as well as ordinary shares with such rights.

As far as value was concerned, that would depend on the individual investors and whether voting rights were important

to them or not. Listing was required before any company could have shares quoted on the Stock Exchange.

Some of the listing requirements were that the company must be of sufficient size and have shares spread among a sufficient number of investors; it must provide information on its activities and its financial • results; the articles of association must allow for majority control, but also protect the small investor