Leisureland succeeds in bid for Mt Hutt

Press, 19 December 1986, Page 5

Leisureland succeeds in bid for Mt Hutt

The Leisureland Corporation, Ltd, the Auck-land-based amusement park group, succeeded early this morning in its bid to take a controlling interest in the Mount Hutt Ski and Alpine Company, Ltd.

An extraordinary meeting of more than 300 Mount Hutt shareholders and members decided this morning to accept Leisureland’s proposal of issuing sufficient shares to give the Auckland company a 51 per cent interest.

A director, Mr Allan Williams, told shareholders that unless the company found outside capital it would be insolvent by the end of January.

“That is my personal view to you as a director,” he said.

Another director, Mr Don Church, a retired chartered accountant, said his seat on the board was becoming warm and by the end of January it would be a lot hotter, a reference to the capital needed. “If we muck around tonight you will be leaving the board with very hot seats by the end of January. It will be too hot for me— I will be out,” said Mr Church. “The Leisureland offer is a fair one and you would have to have a hole in your head not to accept it,” he said. Mount Hutt’s chairman, Mr Peter Yeoman, spent

some time explaining the company’s position in trading, its future, and replying to the criticism of those 115 shareholders who had first called the extraordinary meeting. The chairman of Leisureland, Mr John St Clair Brown, said that under section 8A of an agreement with the Mount Hutt board his company was considering listing the skifield company on the Stock Exchange, with the proviso that something else would be considered if it were better. It was also revealed at the meeting that New Zealand Ski Fields, Ltd, which runs the Turoa skifield on Mount Ruapehu, had offered a one-for-one share swap in a merger

with Mount Hutt. Because New Zealand Ski Fields’ capital was four times greater and its cash resources much larger, Mount Hutt shareholders would have ended up with 10.6 per cent of the merged company’s capital.

The Development Finance Corporation, which owns about 20 per cent of Mount Hutt, would have held 2.1 per cent. However, the solicitor acting for New Zealand Ski Fields, Mr Tony Baldwin, said the D.F.C. had found the terms of the offer unsatisfactory. The pertinent part of the meeting was that the Leisureland offer was the only concrete one before it.