Stars Corp seeks partner

Press, 28 November 1988, Page 33

Stars Corp seeks partner

PA Auckland Listed sport and leisure company, Stars Corp, says it is searching for an overseas equity partner for its travel arm, Stars Travel International, and has finished restructuring its subsidiary, Stars Sports. The chairman, Mr John Tapper, told the annual meeting the company was making steady progress in talks with a potential equity partner, a United States travel operator.

Stars Sports, he said, had been restructured from four divisions into one, with a number of redundancies. Directors expressed disappointment at the year’s result, which was “marred by weak consumer demand and a sharp downturn in tourism.” Mr Tapper said there was some improvement in trading in the first quarter of the current year, but the company had traded below budget in September. A shareholder asked about

Stars’ sharemarket losses, which he said exceeded $400,000 last year. Mr Tapper replied the company’s prospectus had said some short-term funds would be placed in the sharemarket. Admittedly the company had lost on the sharemarket, but the losses were probably not too bad compared with those of other companies with equities investments. The shareholder disagreed that the prospectus had been clear.

It had actually said funds would be invested in “market securities.” Mr Tapper replied that the directors had always intended for some short-term funds to be placed on the sharemarket. He said Stars Corp would stay within the tourism and leisure sectors and was possiibly too widely spread within it. But the company had a lot of confidence in the sectors in which it had chosen to be involved.