Chase-NBA

"Occasional projects would interrupt this intellectual reverie. Soon after Gibbs left Chase-NBA, he received a call from its Australian office. One of Chase-NBA’s clients, the Millaquin Sugar Company of Brisbane, was under takeover threat from their rival, the Bundaberg Sugar Company. Chase-NBA didn’t have the corporate finance capacity to defend Millaquin and wondered whether Gibbs could do it. Millaquin had lost a lot of money throughout 1974 on a failed venture to produce cattle feed from a sugar product and towards the end of the year had slashed its profit forecasts, which had seen the share price tumble.[3](private://read/01jrsfvkjy84rkprtbz9amfvj8/#rw-num-note-477270-388400547-3) At the end of February 1975 Bundaberg launched a takeover bid, offering Millaquin shareholders $2.30 per share cash plus one Bundaberg share for three Millaquin. Gibbs quickly assessed the situation. Bundaberg’s offer was very generous, more than a 40 per cent premium on the market price when normal takeovers gave a 20 to 30 per cent premium. Notwithstanding the egos of the men on the Millaquin board, who stoutly resisted the idea of losing out to their local rivals, Gibbs knew that the takeover would be very hard to stop. His best bet would be to negotiate a higher price."

"His first step was to negotiate Chase-NBA’s fee with Millaquin, in this case 10 per cent of any increase in the price Millaquin obtained from Bundaberg. Gibbs had already agreed with Chase-NBA that he’d pocket 15 per cent of their fee. In a few days, after walking away from the table several times, he managed to secure a very generous redundancy deal for Millaquin’s CEO and an 11 per cent increase in the cash component of Bundaberg’s offer.[4](private://read/01jrsfvkjy84rkprtbz9amfvj8/#rw-num-note-477270-388400547-4) It was an outrageous price for Millaquin that generated a very generous fee for Chase; Gibbs walked away with something approaching a year’s salary for an extended weekend’s work. It was the first major takeover defence Gibbs was responsible for, and he was happy with the result:"