HTD . . . this explains the trading this past week:
Animal activists hit Huntingdon
By Andrew Ward - 14 Feb 2000 23:25GMT
Institutional investors in the City have been criticised for caving in to animal rights
activists after fund managers dumped shares in a research company accused of
cruelty to animals.
Shares in Huntingdon Life Sciences, which runs Europe's largest contract
research laboratory, plummeted last week after a series of hoax bomb warnings
to institutional investors in the company.
Brian Cass, managing director, claimed investors were capitulating to pressure
from the animal rights lobby and warned they would face a wave of activism if they
did not take a stand.
Huntingdon's share price halved last Tuesday after Phillips and Drew, the fund
manager, sold its more than 11 per cent stake at prices traders said were as low
as 1p per share. Shares had closed the previous night at 10p.
Phillips and Drew admitted yesterday that "unpleasant pressure" from animal
rights activists had partly caused its decision to pull out of Huntingdon. Abusive
telephone calls, including death threats, are understood to have been made to
clients of Phillips and Drew. The off-loading came two days into a four-day
telephone blockade of Phillips and Drew by Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty
(SHAC). The fund management company was one of several City institutions
evacuated on February 4 because of bomb warnings from callers claiming to
represent the Animal Liberation Front.
Mr Cass said: "We are disappointed the City is giving in to them. This is the thin
end of the wedge. If such tactics can prove successful against Huntingdon, they
could be used against other companies too. We are by no means the only
company that tests on animals. My message is not an attack on the City, but a
warning about the consequences of giving in to these threats."
Fund managers said that other institutions had also sold stakes in Huntingdon in
recent days. The shares recovered to close on Friday at 73/4.
Addresses and home telephone numbers of directors of UBS UK Holding, the
parent company of Phillips and Drew, were printed in a SHAC newsletter that
urged activists to "ring these people and let them know what you think of animal
cruelty".
The Phillips and Drew spokesman said: "It would be disingenuous of us to
suggest that this pressure did not have an effect."
He said the decision had no ethical motivation but was a "pragmatic decision"
made in "the interests of our clients". He said Phillips and Drew sympathised with
Huntingdon's difficulties.
"The activists have to ask what they have achieved. For every seller there was a
buyer, so if they think they struck a blow, they are mistaken," the spokesman said.
The disruption caused by protestors was "only one of a cluster of reasons" for
selling the stake, he said. Some investors said they were concerned with the
management of Huntingdon, which has seen its value shrink from œ335m in 1990
to œ23m last week.
National Westminster Bank, bankers to Huntingdon, responding to threats of
peaceful action against it by SHAC, said: "We treat the security of our staff and
customers with the upmost seriousness." The organisation has threatened a
telephone blockade and to picket branches.
Greg Jennings, spokesman for SHAC, said: "Every fund manager must have seen
the stories about Phillips and Drew and thought 'There but for the grace of god go
I', because beneath every fund investing in animal cruelty is a publicity timebomb
waiting to go off." |
