Americans welcome Kiwi style – and baking
Sources have said the group of new investors was not told Obeid and his associates also owned a 25 per cent stake in an unincorporated mining joint venture with Cascade until shortly before the share sale in 2010.
The Obeid group was removed from the Cascade register through a transaction organised by Poole. He used a private company as an intermediary to transfer funds to the Obeid interests, classed as a ‘‘third party debt’’.
After Cascade’s attempt to sell itself to White Energy failed, Poole’s private company, Coal and Minerals Group, was unable to make other agreed payments.
That means Obeid’s group now has security over a 9.3 per cent stake in Cascade, effectively making it an investor alongside the Sydney group.
O’Neil company Addenbrooke, which has proposed to redevelop the Rose Bay Marina in Sydney, held the largest stake of the group, through a nominee company, Lost Ark. Addenbrooke had invested A$8m as part of the A$28m raising. The second largest investor was a group including Crichton, which tipped in A$5m. Newton and Pittorino, who sold gold group Hill 50 to South African giant Harmony Gold a decade ago, were also part of the same group. Newton is a director of rugby league team the Roosters, based in Sydney’s eastern suburbs. Brierley put in $3m. Other participants included the children of Cascade investor and one-time director Travers Duncan, at the time chairman of White Energy. Duncan’s daughter Andromeda, the business development counsel of White Energy, invested A$1m.
On the draft equity raising documents, Duncan is listed as a ‘‘consultant’’ to Cascade who is ‘‘directly involved in the day-today operations of the company’’. That is despite him having resigned from the Cascade board more than a year earlier, shortly after it was clear it had secured the Mt Penny project through a NSW government tender now the subject of the ICAC inquiry.
Duncan was due to appear before the inquiry last week, as was James McGuigan, an executive at Cascade.
Other investors in the A$28m raising included stockbrokers Richard Granger and Rex Adams, who now work alongside Potts and Gray at Blue Ocean Equities. Potts is a 40-year veteran stockbroker. Seabrook and Simon Keyser of Ironstone Capital also tipped in funds, along with Nanuk Asset Management investment committee member Ivan Wheen.
‘‘I’m sure a lot of them would be pretty upset they had put in money at a reasonable valuation,’’ one market source said of their investment, which was based on Cascade’s equity being valued at A$387m. The price of thermal coal has plunged and mining costs have continued to rise since the investment two years ago, and even without the complication of the ICAC inquiry, it is possible the value of Cascade’s Mt Penny deposit might have decreased significantly.
White Energy abandoned the Cascade takeover in April 2011. John McGuigan and John Atkinson have since resigned as directors of White Energy but remain directors of Cascade Coal. Duncan, John Kinghorn and Brian Flannery, all of whom are investors in Cascade, remain directors of White Energy.
Atkinson, Flannery and Kinghorn were also due to appear before the inquiry last week.
Continued from page 1 down for our West Coast gift givers.’’
The launch has already begun with Angel boxes going out to ‘‘beta’’ customers and to those who have signed up at Angeldelivery.com by the second week in January. Orders will be taken from all site traffic by the end of January.
‘‘The reaction from the clients who have received an Angel Delivery box in the US so far has been amazing,’’ Cass said.
Cass and her New Zealand team bring the expertise and passion to
‘The reaction from the clients in the US so far has been amazing.’
the joint venture while Duchman and The Fresh Diet bring the infrastructure and a strong marketing and consumer product background.
‘‘I’m learning about scale on every level,’’ Cass said. ‘‘Under the guidance of Zalmi and the team in New York City I’m adapting to the pace and demands of working in the US market.’’
Duchman and his team are sharing the art of delegation and project management on a scale that Cass said she had not experienced before.
‘‘I have the most phenomenal opportunity in the US, and I’m so thankful for all the support I have had from there and here in New Zealand.
‘‘The website, packaging, menus, new products, marketing and brand strategy is all created in New Zealand and then is exported for production in the offshore Angel Delivery hubs. The most gratifying thing of all is that the Americans have been so receptive to our Kiwi way of doing business, our approach and philosophy.
‘‘It’s incredibly exciting.’’