July 23, 2012
The Age
WHAT a difference a year (and some rain) makes. SunRice chairman Gerry Lawson, who along with his board recommended the failed $600 million takeover offer for the rice marketer by the Spanish food giant Ebro last year, has expressed relief on the bid being narrowly defeated by a vote of shareholders.
”The drought and the external bid made for SunRice last year highlighted some shortcomings in our company’s structure,” explained Lawson in the group’s annual report that was dispatched on Friday.
The report celebrated SunRice cracking the $1 billion revenue mark for the first time and posting a 159 per cent jump in net profit.
Lawson added that the former rice-growing co-operative would ”be conducting a review of our governance and capital structure in the coming months to consider the objectives we set in our conversion to a company in 2005, and whether SunRice is well positioned for the future and meeting the needs of our shareholders”. Good to see the narrow miss in being taken over – at what now seems an el-cheapo price – was related to the ”company’s structure” rather than the judgment of its board.
Before last year’s scheme of arrangement was voted down, the SunRice board recommended growers and shareholders accept the offer. It said the Ebro bid represented ”superior value to the status quo and to other available options”. Gone too are the worries raised by the SunRice board about the company’s high debt levels and lack of capital at the time of the Ebro offer.
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