Kerr's PGC, and Barnes's Bath St go another round

Pyne Gould Corporation and Bath Street Capital are again firing shots at each other, and set to head back to the High Court.

Wednesday, September 19th 2018, 7:09AM 1 Comment

Pyne Gould Corporation has recommenced High Court proceedings against Bath Street Capital and its director, Andrew Barnes - who has responded with a counter-claim.

The action relates to a fee it says was payable from the sale of Perpetual Trust in 2013 to Barnes' firm.

PGC is seeking damages of not less than $22 million.

In a statement to the NZX, PGC said the amount of the claim represented unpaid consideration in respect of carry rights that were vested in PGC.

In September 2016, the parties agreed to discontinue earlier legal proceedings and negotiate a settlement. No settlement was reached.

But Bath Street Capital said the fee was not, and had never been, due.

"As expected, PGC’s claims are utterly inconsistent with the explicit terms of its 2014 agreement with Bath Street. We have already commented on the terms of that agreement, and have not changed our position. We therefore believe that these proceedings are nothing short of another futile attempt by PGC’s directors to shore up their accounts, and to justify historic statements made to the market which, in our view, were misleading and inaccurate. We will follow with interest whether their new audit team manages to keep this receivable in PGC’s books."

It said it would "vigorously" defend the claim.

"We have instructed our lawyers to recommence and update our counter-claim which will be served on PGC in the coming days. We take this step reluctantly, as litigation is an expensive waste of time and energy, but the deliberate, repeated actions of PGC and its directors have cost Bath Street and its shareholder Andrew Barnes a significant amount of money over the past few years. The final quantum of damages will be determined at trial, but suffice to say our counter-claim will exceed PGC’s claim by a significant margin."

Tags: Bath Street Perpetual Guardian