Bruce Hancox

"Matthew had to stand up and tell shareholders that the meeting could not go ahead. The injunction granted to Rainbow had been upheld. ‘I remember Bruce Hancox from Brierley’s coming up to me at the meeting and saying, “Craig, we want this animosity to finish. We want this fight to be over. You’ve won. We want to buy your 18 per cent and all this can go away.” So I said, “Well, there’s a price at which we’d sell.” And of course there was a price at which we would sell because, after all, we’d bought it in order to make money.’ The two companies negotiated, Brierley’s accepted Rainbow’s price and Rainbow came out of the deal with a $22 million profit. It was a lot of money and, equally important, it was a win."

"In her book *Brierley: The Man Behind the Corporate Legend*, author Yvonne van Dongen says BIL managing director Bruce Hancox believed that Heatley and Lane were ‘two very talented men who could well have a place in BIL. BIL also had its eye on three of Rainbow’s major investments—Woolworths, Progressive Enterprises and Kern Corporation. Although it is suspected that the value of the rest of Rainbow’s corporate assets were as ephemeral as its name, these three assets plus Heatley and Lane were considered worthy BIL takeover targets.’[4](private://read/01jectdbce729daxqkxt7cbe8r/#mn9)"

"Now on BIL’s board, Heatley’s radar was still pinging, especially for big investment opportunities. Paul Collins remembers sitting in his office with Bruce Hancox before the sharemarket crash when Heatley walked in. ‘Craig said, “I think we actually need to do something bold. I think what we need to do is buy General Motors.”’ Collins was dumbstruck. ‘I know it’s available,’ he recalls Heatley adding, ‘because I’ve been talking to some investment bankers in the United States.’ At that time Brierley’s market capitalisation was somewhere between $6 billion and $8 billion, Collins recalls, and General Motors was many times larger. ‘And here he was talking about us buying a company that at that time was probably capitalised at a multiple considerably larger than BIL’s. I said, “Well, where would we even start, assuming we found the money?”’ Heatley replied, ‘We’d just all relocate over there.’ He went on to explain what they could sell and split up to make it work and concluded by saying that Brierley’s should make $50 billion out of it."

"The defamation action never proceeded. In the end, BIL’s greater strength, size and presence was too much for Rainbow and when the endgame came, it was played out swiftly. BIL’s Bruce Hancox asked Rainbow for a high-level meeting. Hancox came to Heatley’s office. The battle was harming both sides, he said. It was doing no good for Rainbow, for BIL or indeed for New Zealand’s investment scene overall. A week later, Hancox came again and the two companies agreed to a truce. Another week passed and Hancox returned, this time to tell Heatley that Brierley’s had started buying Rainbow shares and was aiming for a bigger stake."

"Heatley was inside but had felt on the outer from day one. The power lay with Ron Brierley—now Sir Ron after his knighthood was announced in the 1988 New Year Honours List—Paul Collins and Bruce Hancox. Heatley was not in that inner circle so had no control. ‘Heatley and Lane were also re-rated along with their former assets, and the judgement was harsh,’ van Dongen writes. ‘They weren’t and aren’t talented’ was Sir Ron’s own brutal analysis.[1](private://read/01jectdbce729daxqkxt7cbe8r/#mn17) Something was going to have to give."