Bank Amalgamation.

Feilding Star, Volume XVII, Issue 76, 26 September 1895, Page 2

Bank Amalgamation.

(Per Press Association). Duxedin. September 25. At the Colonial Bauk meeting the Hon Geo. McLean, chairman, referred as follows to the banking negotiations : — These negotiations, for reasons explained at the time, we felt it necessary in the interests of shareholders to break off. If the conditions on which this bank then insisted had been agreed to the difficulties which were dealt with during the present session would haA r e been avoided. Both parties during the present negotiations have, I believe, been anxious to coino to a fair and equitable arrangement, but no arrangement has been arrived at. It is not at present desirable that the details of these negotiations should be made public. The provisions of the Act of this session have so far prevented such an agreement, being come to between the two banks as in your interests we could have agreed to. Whilst the directors of this bank and the Bank of New Zealand may enter into a preliminary contract for sale and purchase, the validity of such contract rests on ratification by the shareholders. Whatever the directors may agree to in the meantime will be of no validity unless approved by the shareholders. — The meeting was adjourned until 80th October, when the directors will recommend a definite course. After the motion to adjourn the meeting had been seconded, Mr J. W. Bain, (Invorcargill) said that the shareholders whom he represented had no objection to a sale so long as it was a sale for cash, clear of any further liability. They had no objection — many of them at any rate — to such a sale. His own opinion was that the Bank should go on. It was important for the shareholders to know the conditions and the terms on which the sale and transfer wore to ba made. Mi Laing read the clause cf the Act which authorises the sale, and was about to explain what had been done at the meeting at Invercargill when a point of order was raised. After some further remarks, the chairman said that, before putting the motion, he should like to disabuse the minds of the shareholders of the notion that there was to be anything else than a sale for cash. It was a question of purchase and for cash. He had allowed Mr Bain some latitude, and that gentlemen had read to the meeting the terms of the Act. It was those very terms that had prevented the two sets of directors from coming to an agreement, and they must be altered if they were to come to terms. The chairman added that as regards the emergency meeting there was no idea of the directors stealing a march upon the shareholders. The shareholders were going to have a deliberate vote : there was no need to be afraid of that. The motion was then carried unanimously. Says the Parliamentary correspondent of the Napier Herald : — I hear that there is no probability of any agreement being come to between the Bank of New Zealand and the Colonial Bank as to the purchase of the latter institution. Th.c directors of the Bank of New Zealand have, I understand, determined to judge by themselves of the value of the business they are told to acquire, and in doing so have, so it is reported, disagreed beyond the possibility of agreement as to the value of the assets of the Colonial Bank. That is said to be the actual position at the present time, but there is still some chance of a compromise.