South African High Court rules against Harmony
Harmony notes with surprise the judgment of the Witwatersrand Local Division of the High Court of South Africa to the effect that Harmony’s subsequent offer for Gold Fields lapsed at midnight on 18 December 2004. Accordingly, the subsequent offer is no longer in force and no further Gold Fields shares tendered into the subsequent offer will be settled. Acceptances in respect of 22,927 Gold Fields shares were settled by Harmony on Tuesday, 17 May 2005, in accordance with the provisions of the offer and the Securities Regulation Code. Harmony will investigate the need and mechanisms for unwinding such settlements.
Harmony will decide whether or not to appeal the judgment after having had an opportunity to consider the reasons given for the judgment. Given the situation, Harmony does not see any merit in becoming embroiled in a costly legal process unnecessarily.
The ruling has no effect on the early settlement offer. Accordingly, following its early settlement offer, and including the acceptances referred to above, Harmony owns a total of 56,629,409 Gold Fields shares representing approximately 11.5% of the entire issued share capital of Gold Fields.
CE Bernard Swanepoel said: “Whilst I am surprised that the High Court reached this decision, the impact on Harmony is minimal. The judgment impacts only on those Gold Fields shareholders that have accepted the subsequent offer. Harmony had already chosen not to pay the price indicated by the prevailing market ratio as this would have resulted in too great a transfer of value to Gold Fields shareholders and would have been contrary to Harmony’s commitment to always act in the best interests of its shareholders. Our bid was neither value destroying nor anything other than a legitimate offer from one set of shareholders to another designed to assist the South African gold mining industry on its inevitable course to consolidation.
Following the offer, we now have a substantial asset in our Gold Fields shares, currently worth about R3.6 billion, and look forward to concrete evidence that the Gold Fields’ board has a coherent strategy in place to deliver on any of its promises in a manner that is in the best interests of all of its shareholders, now including Harmony.”
For more details contact:
Bernard Swanepoel
Chief Executive
+27(0)83 303 9922
Ferdi Dippenaar
Marketing Director
+27(0)82 807 3684
Brenton Saunders
Executive, Investor Relations
+27(0)83 607 4060
Vusi Magadana
Investor Relations Officer
Office: +27 11 684 0149
Mobile: +27(0)72 157 5986
vusi.magandan@harmony.co.za