this t/o proposal looks like a sham. Yarraman was back door listed in the US but has no real income. Its not traded in 5 months so the sp is irrelevant, it appears not to be a viable entity.
the clandestine funding is not adding to a picture of health either. Seemingly they want the assets of ETW but with them majority holders. Their record is poor. Unless they can bring in reputable names this offer is going nowhere. l just hope that ETW dont grab it as an easy way out of restructuring debt. ANZ will have the final say on that.
Opinions ?
"THE business strategy of the US-listed wine group bidding for Australia's Evans & Tate apparently follows an ambitious but ultimately flawed blueprint to assemble a portfolio of vineyards in major Australian wine regions with the aim of selling wine to the huge US market.
Not only has Yarraman Wines dusted off the model used six years ago by the then owner of its Hunter Valley vineyard and winery, Gary Blom, but it has also hired the disgraced entrepreneur to seek out partners and form strategic relationships.
Mr Blom is a shareholder in a 60 per cent stakeholder in Yarraman Wines, though he cannot be a director because the corporate regulator has banned him from managing a corporation until September 2007.
His disqualification was also blamed for the $140 million failure of his giant movie screen business Cinema Plus, which set up the IMAX entertainment complexes in the late 1990s.
Mr Blom's plans to turn the 75.6-hectare Yarraman vineyard into a successful public company went sour in mid-2002 and investors lost about $40 million.
The collapse was blamed partly on the vineyard's failure to sell enough wine, plus distribution problems in the US and Britain.
The vineyard, then named Barrington Estate, was placed into liquidation along with three others acquired as part of the plan to establish a portfolio of vineyards in the nation's premier wine regions.
Mr Blom, who bought the Yarraman winery in 1994, regained control in 2004 when he bought it from liquidators Ferrier Hodgson, two years after the collapse of the portfolio operation, Barrington Wine Corporation.
The vineyard was backdoor-listed on the US Nasdaq over-the-counter market last December, leaving a company founded by Mr Blom, Delta Dawn, with a 60 per cent stake.
After the collapse of the Barrington Wine Corporation, investors alleged in court that profit had been dragged down because the vineyard was the "rotten core" of the business.
The investors claimed Mr Blom's forecasts for the 2000 financial year were close to 100 per cent wrong, and that wine sales were overstated by about 10,000 cases. The entire group collapsed in mid-2002.
ETW Price at posting:
0.0¢ Sentiment: Buy Disclosure: Held
