MINNOWS SWALLOWING UP THE WHALES When the Perth tycoon Robert Holmes a Court launched a surprise bid for A$10 billion Broken Hill Proprietary in 1983 through an unknown and minuscule company called Wigmores, he ushered in the most frenetic stage in what had already become the latest Australian corporate craze - takeovers.
The Holmes a Court tilt at BHP -- where he now speaks for a menacing 29% of the capital -- has for the past year brought takeovers almost nightly into the living rooms of most Australians. The faces of Holmes a Court and fellow raiders John Elliott. Alan Bond and Ron Brierley, unknown a year ago, have become standard news fare.
The BHP bid, dragging on amid a wave of other major takeovers, has changed the Australian corporate terrain for ever. Never before have acquisitions been subject to so much public scrutiny. Federal government hearings and a two-month public inquiry by the corporate watchdog, the National Companies and Securities Commission, have probed the intricacies of the BHP battle with a tenacity no future raider can afford to ignore. But just as significant has been the role of the trade union movement, which has sought to intervene by making tax deductibility of raiders' borrowings a big issue.