Buy-out demand for hotel operator

Shareholders in the country's largest listed hotel operator are gearing up for a heated annual meeting after a series of demands from investor advocate Bruce Sheppard.

Millennium & Copthorne Hotels New Zealand, formerly CDL Hotels, is due to hold its meeting in Auckland next month. The company has 31 hotels in New Zealand under the Millennium, Copthorne and Kingsgate brands.

Sheppard's demands follow on from his challenge last year when he singled out the company to oppose its adoption of the stock exchange's "auto pilot" provision under which the constitutions of listed companies are automatically altered every time the exchange alters the listing rules.

At the annual meeting last May, Sheppard and others challenged the company to buy them out, claiming that changing the company's constitution triggered such a buy-out right.

Sheppard, as a director of Financial Planners (Auckland) which holds 550,000 shares, has now written to Millennium wanting a buy-out. Millennium company secretary Takeshi Ito said yesterday the company had only just received the letter and legal advice was being sought on the demands. Although no notice had been issued, Millennium would hold its meeting in Auckland on May 31. The venue was to be advised.

Calling shareholders "long-suffering and loyal co-owners", Sheppard was disappointed with the company's response to correspondence in February.

He wants next month's meeting taped and transcribed. He believed this was necessary because undertakings given at last year's annual meeting had not been recorded in the minutes nor been carried out.

At that meeting, he said independent Millennium director Richard Bobb had promised to prepare a report on the merits of a share buy-back but the undertaking was never recorded. Sheppard also wants last year's meeting minutes corrected to show Bobb's undertakings.