Patrick Corporation
Encyclopedia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
n publicly listed logistics
Logistics
Logistics is the management of the flow of goods between the point of origin and the point of destination in order to meet the requirements of customers or corporations. Logistics involves the integration of information, transportation, inventory, warehousing, material handling, and packaging, and...
conglomerate. Headed by CEO Chris Corrigan
Chris Corrigan
Chris Corrigan is an Australian businessman. He was the Managing Director of the Patrick Corporation until it was taken over in 2006....
before it was absorbed by Toll Holdings
Toll Holdings
TOLL , properly TOLL Holdings Limited, is Australia's largest transport company, based in Melbourne, Victoria. The company has operations in road, rail, sea and air in 55 countries....
in 2006, Patrick had interests in shipping, rail and aviation, including a 62% shareholding in airline Virgin Blue. Its headquarters were located in Sydney
Sydney
Sydney is the most populous city in Australia and the state capital of New South Wales. Sydney is located on Australia's south-east coast of the Tasman Sea. As of June 2010, the greater metropolitan area had an approximate population of 4.6 million people...
, New South Wales
New South Wales
New South Wales is a state of :Australia, located in the east of the country. It is bordered by Queensland, Victoria and South Australia to the north, south and west respectively. To the east, the state is bordered by the Tasman Sea, which forms part of the Pacific Ocean. New South Wales...
.
Patrick Corporation was one of the main protagonists in the 1998 Australian waterfront dispute
1998 Australian waterfront dispute
The Australian waterfront dispute of 1998 was a watershed event in Australian Industrial Relations history, in which the Patrick Corporation undertook a restructuring of their operations for the purpose of increasing the productivity of their workforce...
which centred on the Port of Melbourne
Port of Melbourne
The Port of Melbourne is Australia's busiest port for containerised and general cargo. It is located in Melbourne, Victoria and covers an area at the mouth of the Yarra River, downstream of Bolte Bridge, which is at the head of Port Phillip, as well as several piers on the bay itself...
.
In August 2005, Toll Holdings
Toll Holdings
TOLL , properly TOLL Holdings Limited, is Australia's largest transport company, based in Melbourne, Victoria. The company has operations in road, rail, sea and air in 55 countries....
launched a hostile takeover bid for Patrick Corporation, which would include selling down its share in Virgin Blue.
In January 2006, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission
Australian Competition and Consumer Commission
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission is an independent authority of the Australia government. It was established in 1995 with the amalgamation of the Australian Trade Practices Commission and the Prices Surveillance Authority to administer the Trade Practices Act 1974...
(ACCC) ordered that Toll could not takeover Patrick Corporation. However, on 11 March 2006, after Toll gave the ACCC further undertakings in relation to the conduct of the business after a successful acquisition the ACCC indicated that it would withdraw its opposition.
Patrick was given approval by the ACCC to acquire freight-forwarders FCL Interstate Transport on the condition that it broke up Pacific National, its joint-venture with Toll. The deal also hinged on Toll being unsuccessful in its bid for Patrick.
On 14 April 2006, Patrick Corporation agreed to accept Toll's revised bid for the company after spending nine months fighting the hostile takeover. While not officially acquired yet, it is expected that Toll will soon own enough Patrick shares to take control of the company. Toll's revised bid, some $5.8 billion instead of about $4 billion offered initially, was considered by Patrick to be the best deal it could get. The deal ends Patrick's plans for acquiring FCL and will mean the sell-off of Patrick's 50% stake in Pacific National to a third party (under the ACCC's ruling). Toll will now become the only fully vertically integrated logistics company in Australia — it will be able to provide a full package of shipping, road, rail and door-to-door transport of freight. Queensland Rail (QR) is already making plans to buy out FCL and trucking company Linfox in order to create its own mega-logistics chain.
On 24 May 2006, after having had held over 50% of Patrick for the past two weeks and having extended its offer for an additional week after not being able to achieve the required stock to remove Patrick from the ASX, Toll reached 90%. Patrick was absorbed the following day. Patrick had previously been a constituent of the S&P/ASX 200
S&P/ASX 200
The S&P/ASX 200 index is a market-capitalization weighted and float-adjusted stock market index of Australian stocks listed on the Australian Securities Exchange from Standard & Poor's...
index. Trade in the remaining shares was suspended on 6 June 2006, and PRK was removed from the official list on 3 July 2006 after completion of compulsory acquisition.