recent article in the australian

Two good articles by the Australian.

1st one by Bryan Firth



Probe desirable

WAH Nam's claim that it is "not surprising" the majority of acceptances to its takeover bid for iron ore hopeful Brockman Resources have come from Asian investors has done nothing to allay the target board's concerns that a web of Asian investors have been warehousing shares for its unwanted bidder.

Brockman failed earlier this year to persuade the Takeovers Panel to take action because it was unable to find conclusive hard evidence to back up its suspicions.

But the panel was "quite concerned" about certain matters and invited corporate regulator ASIC, which has powers of compulsion and enforcement, to consider the material.

The panel said also that there may be "new circumstances: if some or all of the shareholders named in Brockman's application were to accept the Wah Nam bid and it supported an association between those parties.

Wah Nam, which already owned 22.6 per cent of Brockman, announced a scrip offer six months ago of 30 Wah Nam shares for each Brockman share and until recently had been making no headway.

But a spate of sizeable acceptances has lifted its stake to a controlling 51.9 per cent.

Brockman continues to recommend rejection and to investigate these matters, and has been seeking an ASIC investigation.

Wah Nam has responded to Brockman by stating that its analysis showed that Asian investors, excluding Wah Nam, owned 31 per cent of Brockman and that Australian investors owned only 21 per cent.

However, that analysis ignores the fact that in recent unusually heavy trading in Brockman shares, many of the Asian shareholders named in the panel application have been selling down their shares to be replaced by other Asian investors, who have then turned around and accepted into the Wah Nam offer.

Parties who were named and have sold down include Leading Price, Tradewin International and Yenchong.

Buyers include Kingston Securities, China Guoyin and RBS Coutts.

They have all accepted into the Wah Nam offer.

None of those buyers have been encouraged by Brockman to invest and it is clear they bought with the intention of becoming shareholders in Wah Nam.

That may be a legitimate purpose but it should also be cause for ASIC to at least make inquiries to satisfy itself that foreign investors have not simply found a way to bypass Australia's foreign investment rules.


http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/opinion/investors-give-gloucesters-proposal-the-thumbs-down/story-e6frg9kx-1226057808118