All parties silent on Terralink injunction

Finance Minister Michael Cullen and Terralink receiver Gary Traveller are refusing to talk about a High Court injunction against the sale of the failed state-owned enterprise.

The Business Herald understands that a company or group - possibly an unsecured creditor or one of the unsuccessful bidders for the SOE - has sought to stop the sale, announced last week, to New Zealand Aerial Mapping and Animation Research (ARL).

But receiver Gary Traveller, from PricewaterhouseCoopers, would not discuss the issue.

The minister's office was similarly evasive: "Dr Cullen declined to comment."

Staff at ARL said they had heard about the injunction, but could not give any more information.

Ian Taylor, managing director of ARL, could not be contacted.

The computer-mapping enterprise went into receivership after a large contract with computer services company EDS cost more and took longer than expected.

Mr Traveller said last week that the receivers had planned to let all interested bidders in Terralink go through due diligence, but decided to sell to the ARL/NZAM consortium because they were prepared to pay a premium - but only if the other bidders did not go through due diligence.