Chase spends $50M in FTC raid

Press, 12 February 1986, Page 37

Chase spends $50M in FTC raid

Chase Corporation, Ltd, yesterday completed its part bid for 20 per cent of the shares in the Farmers’ Trading Company, Ltd. In one day and a half of hectic trading, Chase spent SS4M buying about 31M FTC shares at its original offer price of 175 c for each ordinary share and 500 c for each preference share. Chase had to spend an extra S4M buying 2M FTC shares after the retail company announced late on Monday evening that it would place about 10 per cent of its capital with the AMP Society. The placement was part of a proposal to form an equal joint venture with the society, a new financial company to be called Farmers AMP Credit Cor-

poration. The placement of 12.5 M shares will give the society a stake of about 20 per cent in FTC. The issue was made at 141 c a share and was worth 517.6 M. In a statement last evening, Chase said that after completing its onmarket stand for 20 per cent of Farmers Trading Company Limited it withdrew from the market before the afternoon call.

The additional 15 per cent of FTC shares bought yesterday were from both institutional and private investors. “At this stage Chase has no intention of purchasing further shares in Farmers.” Chase had held discussions with the FTC board and was pleased with the

co-operation that had been expressed. An offer of a board seat in FTC had been made to the company, Chase said.

The chairman of FTC, Mr Lincoln Laidlaw, said the agreement with AMP was after three months of negotiations, and was in line with the company’s announced public position to strengthen its finance and credit card activities, the Press Association reports from Auckland.

After the establishment of a satisfactory trading history, Mr Laidlaw said, consideration would be given to the placement of a percentage of the share capital of the new company with shareholders of FTC, he said.