Yealands promises new Oyster Bay offer by Christmas

Peter Yealands

Entrepreneur Peter Yealands said today Peter Yealands Investments Ltd would table a new offer for Oyster Bay Marlborough Vineyards before Christmas for possibly more than 50 per cent control.

The long-running takeover battle was sent back to the starting blocks yesterday after the High Court voided a takeover offer by Delegat's Wine Estate.

The court said errors in the information sent to shareholders were too great to be solved by a corrective statement.

Mr Yealands has a notice of intention to offer $4.50 for 50 per cent of Oyster Bay, valuing the company at $40.5 million.

That notice expires on Thursday. It can be varied but Mr Yealands must show he has the funds to cover a successful bid.

He told NZPA he was "seeing if he can scrape together enough by then". Otherwise, he may let that notice lapse and issue a fresh notice and offer.

Mr Yealands has 6.9 per cent of Oyster Bay and Delegat's 32 per cent. Minority shareholder David Rankin, who also objected to the Delegat's takeover, owns around 5 per cent.

Mr Yealands said he would put something together by Christmas.

"We will do it absolutely as soon as possible. At the moment I am contemplating making an offer for more shares than what we have already indicated before. I am working on that at the moment."

Delegat's has not said whether it will match Mr Yealands' offer. The court's decision comes after an about-face from the Takeovers Panel last week on how the takeover battle should proceed.

The Takeovers Panel said it welcomed the court's decision as an endorsement of the panel's recommendation to cancel Delegat's successful bid for majority control.

In a statement to the Stock Exchange yesterday, Oyster Bay said the High Court had declared Delegat's successful $4.00 a share takeover offer to lift its stake to 50.1 per cent void, meaning it will have to start from scratch if its wants to relaunch a bid.

The court case was called to address problems with the target company statement issued by Oyster Bay, which did not include a range of information about the market value of its vineyards.

Mr Yealands and Mr Rankin contended that the company could be worth as much as twice what was indicated in the target company statement.

Initially the panel asked the court to order that Oyster Bay shareholders who had accepted Delegat's offer simply be given the chance to revoke their acceptances once a revised target company statement was issued, with no need to re-start the takeover process.

But on seeing more grape price and valuation information the panel last week advised the court it had changed its mind and supported Mr Yealands' view that Delegat's offer should be scrapped.

- NZPA