Bendon deal stripped bare

By Deborah Hill Cone

Friday 25th October 2002

The takeover of lingerie marketer Bendon Group will be stripped bare today in the High Court at Auckland.

Behind-the-scenes details of the transaction will be revealed as would-be takeover partner Jowada Holdings' application for a summary judgment against Eric Watson's Cullen Investments and Pacific Retail Group is heard by Master John Faire.

Jowada Holdings, a company set up by economist and company director Josephine Grierson, is suing Cullen and PRG after plans for Jowada and Cullen to co-operate to take over Bendon went off the rails.

Cullen's PRG ended up buying Bendon without inclu ding Jowada. Jowada is claiming it is owed a "success fee" of about $900,000 under a contract which was signed after it introduced the deal to Cullen.

Summary judgment is an accelerated court process used when written documents provide a party's complete case, but the bar is set high for the action to succeed.

The High Court will grant the summary judgment only if Jowada, represented by Paul Dale, can show Cullen has no arguable defence.

Summary judgment is used when the plaintiff believes it has such a strong case it could lead to an automatic judgment in its favour.

Meanwhile the Takeovers Panel has been handed some information about a crucial transaction in the Bendon takeover but said there was no reason to investigate further.

Court documents in the Jowada case are believed to cover the deal in which Bendon shareholder Axa sold Cullen and PRG an option to buy its strategic 4.45% stake in the company for $1.90 a share.

The price surprised the market which thought Axa would not sell for less than $2 per share.

Takeovers Panel executive Kerry Murrell said the panel had not been able to acquire the court documents and would not take the matter further.

He said under the Takeovers Code Cullen or PRG could acquire the first 20% of the shares in the company for whatever price it wanted. It would not create any right or obligation that the rest of the shares would be acquired for that price, Mr Murrell said.

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