Bob Matthew

"‘So now it gets heated. They send us a note back saying, “The deal’s done and you’re too late and we’re not interested.” Now I ⁠*know* there is something strange going on because if you were going to sell your house for $300,000 and I come along and offer you $350,000, you would take the $350,000 but they just said no. They didn’t even say, “Let’s have a meeting, let’s discuss it.” If they’d been smart they would have engaged with us but it felt to me that Bob Matthew had just taken this adversarial attitude, which seemed personal about me though I don’t know why.’ Again Heatley picked up the phone to Rainbow’s lawyers, who agreed to seek an injunction in the High Court against Rothmans’ sale of its New Zealand business to its Australian counterpart.⁠"

"‘Bob Matthew basically told me to fuck off. He said something along the lines of, “You’re wasting our time. You’ll never make any money. We don’t want you on our share register, piss off.” That was essentially the five minutes.’ Heatley was taken aback. Rainbow had no particular plans for the investment and no appetite for more than its 18 per cent. The new shareholder asked for a board seat and was turned down. Heatley had walked into a situation that he had not foreseen and he could discern no reason for the hostility. ‘But this is a male thing and I’m not particularly proud of it but when someone says, Fuck you, you kind of think, Well, fuck you, too.’ What Heatley did not know, and had no way of knowing, was that while Bob Matthew appeared to hold a significant stake in Rothmans, it had in fact been funded by BIL. Heatley knew only that Matthew was hostile."