Brierley's Mercantile Investment raises $1.4 mln in discounted placement

Tuesday 22nd December 2015

Ron Brierley's Mercantile Investments raised $1.4 million in a discounted share placement to local wholesale investors, which it plans to use for general investment purposes.

The veteran corporate raider's investment vehicle sold about 11.2 million shares at 12.5 cents each to New Zealand investors in a placement, which will give them about 4 percent of the enlarged share register. That's a 19 percent discount to the 15.5 cents the shares last traded at on the NZX. The dual-listed shares were last at 15 Australian cents on the ASX.

The proceeds will be used "for general investment purposes" and the placement doesn't need shareholder approval, Mercantile said in a statement.

This week Mercantile increased its stake in ASX-listed shipping firm Richfield International to 19.9 percent. It built its initial stake in Richfield from a forced sale in August when Australia's Takeovers Panel deemed a transaction breached disclosure obligations.

Mercantile is at least the third diversified investment vehicle for Brierley, who built Guinness Peat Group after being forced out of Brierley Investments in the early 1990s. The group named for him struggled to recover from the 1987 sharemarket crash and now exists as GuocoLeisure, with its primary listing on the Singapore stock exchange, while GPG liquidated its portfolio and renamed itself Coats for its remaining threadmaking business.

Brierley seized control of ASX listed Mercantile, then called India Equities Fund, in 2012 when shareholders agreed to a deal giving him 54 percent of the company and its chair in return for his stakes in Copper Strike, Trinity Group, ING Community Living Group, Australian Pharmaceutical Industries and Trojan Equity.

Old comrades Ron Langley and Gary Weiss have also been brought into the fold.

BusinessDesk.co.nz

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