Monday 22nd of March 1999

Guinness Peat Group (GPG) has won approval to takes its appeal against Tower Corporation's demutualisation to the Privy Council.
The Court of Appeal granted GPG leave for the appeal with the condition that the case be heard by early June so as to not delay Tower's sharemarket listing plans.
Tower plans to demutualise and list on the New Zealand sharemarket in September.
GPG has been seeking to merge its 51 per cent owned subsidiary Tyndall Australia with Tower for nearly a year. Two earlier attempts to get court approval for the merger have failed.
Tower Corporation boss James Boonzaier earlier labelled GPG's reasoning for taking the Tower demutualisation scheme to the Privy Council as unbelievable.
"GPG failed to convince the High Court and the Court of Appeal on the merits of its proposal and now Sir Ron (Brierley) and the GPG board want to waste more of GPG's shareholders' funds on going to the Privy Council."
Boonzaier says GPG shareholders should be asking questions of their board.
He says Tower has no option but to resist the legal action.
However, he is quoted in the Evening Post yesterday as saying that both sides in the dispute had agreed to take the case to the Privy Council and that he was confident it would win again.