Contact Energy is claiming a minor victory against a company notorious for making low-ball share purchase offers to naive investors.
The electricity company has won a High Court judgment that it was within its rights to make it difficult for the Stock & Share Trading Company to contact its shareholders.
Contact general counsel Paul Ridley-Smith said the judgment from Justice Simon France was great news for listed companies who wanted to protect their small investors from unsolicited offers priced well below their true market value.
"We were taken to court. We didn't initiate it. We provided Andrew Kennedy of Prudentia Law, acting for Stock & Share, with a register which is 75,000 names and addresses and the shareholding details, which we're obliged to do under the Securities Act.
"When we printed it out from the electronic database, we put across each page a large watermark 'property of Contact Energy Ltd', as we believe we were entitled to do," he said.
However, Mr Kennedy objected and asked for it clean, which Contact declined to do. Mr Kennedy then sought declaratory judgement in the High Court.
"It was a very short proceedings and we won," Mr Ridley-Smith said.
"The judge concurred with us that we had met our statutory obligation, we'd provided the register, we'd provided a copy, that's that."
