E?corp rethink on G. Peat

Press, 11 October 1988, Page 26

E ? corp rethink on G. Peat

NZPA-AAP Sydney Equiticorp International may hold on to its 61 per cent stake in British financial group, Guiness Peat, now it has offloaded its main industrial arm, Feltrax International. Mr Allan Hawkins, chairman of the Equiticorp group, said now its Feltrax holding had been sold to BTR Nylex the group would have to rethink strategy. “We may take the Guiness Peat investment off the market,” he told Channel Nine’s “Business Sunday” television programme. But he said Guiness Peat’s aviation leasing interests would still be sold. He also defended the sale of Equiticorp’s 80 per cent of Feltrax for sAustsB9.73 million (SNZ7S6M). “The market said we had to get our balance sheet size down,” he said. “We’d clearly over-expanded in a bull market.

“We were not under any pressure from our bankers — we just had to get ourselves down to size.” The group had achieved its target, and its debt ratio was now at a much easier level of around 40 per cent of equity. The sale accounted for about a quarter of the group’s total assets. In future it would concentrate on the Australian market, where its finance division did about 70 per cent of its business. “The New Zealand share market is so dead we don’t see any point in mucking around in that market,” Mr Hawkins said. He also said the group was not likely to sell its holding in Fisher and Paykel the New Zealand whiteware manufacturer. The holding was being reviewed with the Fisher and Paykel family shareholders, but he doubted it would go.