Packaging and property billionaire Raphael Geminder is set to...

Packaging and property billionaire Raphael Geminder is set to battle with minority shareholders as he seeks to delist Pact Group, after a failed $234 million takeover bid last year.

Pact said on Tuesday that it would hold an extraordinary general meeting on June 12 for a vote to delist, citing low liquidity in the stock and the costs of maintaining an ASX listing. Geminder holds 87.9 per cent of the company.

Activist investor Jeremy Raper, a former Goldman Sachs banker who now runs Raper Capital and owns shares in Pact, said the move would seriously disadvantage minority shareholders who had earlier rejected the takeover offer.

The announced delisting by Pact Group’s majority shareholder, Bennamon, represents just the latest event in a long catalogue designed to disenfranchise and expropriate value from minority shareholders,” Raper said.

A Geminder entity, Bennamon, launched a buyout bid for Pact in September 2023 when the billionaire owned 50 per cent. He extended the bid 13 times but by June 2024 was unable to move past the 90 per cent mark required for compulsory acquisition.

Raper said delisting Pact would hurt minority shareholders who rely on crucial disclosures and voting provisions which the company must adhere to as an ASX-listed entity.

“Removing those protections as an unlisted company would thus disproportionately hurt minority shareholders,” he said. Raper plans to write to the ASX and the Takeovers Panel to outline his concerns in detail, and to specifically request that Geminder’s entities be prohibited from voting their shares at any EGM.

Raper said he had spoken with a range of smaller shareholders who were similarly unhappy with the delisting plan.

Geminder, whose wealth was estimated at $1.58 billion on the Financial Review Rich List, and his advisers did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Pact Group also issued a trading update on Tuesday, noting early signs of demand softening because of the fallout from US President Donald Trump’s tariffs. Customers were delaying orders or changing them, while shipping container availability was being disrupted in supply chains.

Still, Pact also reported a 7.7 per cent rise in underlying earnings, before interest and tax for the nine months to March 31, and said it had started a strategic review to assess the potential divestment of Pact’s Asian packaging and closures business.

Pact, which makes plastic bottles, vitamin containers and coat hangers, had a sharemarket capitalisation of $1.6 billion three years ago. But profits have been hit by surging inflation in raw materials and substantial investment to modernise its plants.