Richfield urges shareholders to take no action after takeover bid from Brierley's Mercantile

Tuesday 29th December 2015

Richfield International, an ASX listed shipping firm, urged shareholders to take no action while it reviews a takeover offer from veteran corporate raider Ron Brierley's Mercantile Investment.

Richfield received an unsolicited on-market takeover offer of 20 Australian cents per share from Mercantile on Dec. 23, the Perth-based company said in a statement. The shares have been unchanged at 20 Australian cents since Dec. 22, and have risen 135 percent this year.

Mercantile, chaired by Brierley, has increased its stake to 23.6 percent of Richfield from 19.9 percent. The Sydney-based investor built its initial stake from a forced sale in August when Australia's Takeovers Panel deemed a transaction breached disclosure obligations. It raised $1.4 million earlier this month in a discounted share placement to local wholesale investors, which it said it will use for general investment purposes.

Richfield said its directors would review Mercantile's statement, and urged shareholders to wait until the board had made a formal response in its target statement in January.

Brierley 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. The dual-listed shares were last at 15 cents on the NZX.

BusinessDesk.co.nz

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