“Obviously as this thing unfolds, if it goes any further, we will be keeping all our options open, and there are a whole multitude of options and you can all guess what they would be,” Tattersall\’s Managing Director Duncan Fischer told Reuters.
Fischer said Tattersall\’s was completely focused on its proposed “merger of equals” with UNiTAB and had not discussed splitting UNiTAB\’s assets with Tabcorp.
He also added that Tabcorp\’s bid could run into problems with the Queensland State Government, which has a law that requires UNiTAB\’s wagering operations to keep their head office in the state. But Queensland State Treasurer Anna Bligh said the State Government was prepared to remove the requirement if Tabcorp guaranteed it would protect jobs in the state.
Bligh also said the group\’s New South Wales monitoring operations must be moved to Queensland, where UNiTAB\’s wagering operations must remain.
UNiTAB executives said they would not rule out a bid for Tattersall\’s if the merger did not go ahead. Here again UNiTAB would have to gain approval from the Victoria State Government for any bid above a 10 per cent holding in Tattersall\’s.
Tattersall\’s and UNiTAB first agreed for their “merger of equals” in March 2006.
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