30 August 2000
Troubled HLS Deadline Passes |
Time should have been up for Huntingdon Life Sciences Group Plc (HLS), which has become infamous
for the way it has attracted protests from animal rights campaigners for its
experiments on live animals.
Bank loans totalling £22,586,000 were due to be repaid tomorrow, August 31, 2000. The company have however managed to side-step this latest in a series of recent troubles by securing an agreement a deal with privately owned U.S. investment firm FHP Realty LLC to refinance its debt. This has enabled HLS to negotiate an extension on its current bank loans to October 31. Huntingdon, whose share price has suffered over the past decade due to adverse publicity, is selling some research centres to FHP and then leasing them back on 20 year agreements. In a recent interview with Reuters, Greg Avery of campaigners Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (SHAC) said that Huntingdon had gone to FHP, which is also chaired by Huntingdon's Chairman Andrew Baker, because it had not been able to secure the funds from an external source. ``They have had to milk money from other parts of (Baker's) company to rescue Huntingdon,'' he said. Huntingdon Life posted second quarter results for the three months to June, including a pre-tax loss of 2.47 million pounds, up 8.4 percent from 2.28 million pounds in the 1999 period, on turnover up 11.7 percent at 15.9 million pounds. ``We really have got Huntingdon now. They know it as well...This is the last throw of the dice for Huntingdon,'' Avery said. The stock has been on a continuous decline from a 365 pence high in mid-1990. In April HLS, which is a contract research firm that does pre-clinical and non-clinical testing for pharmaceutical, cosmetic, and engineering firms, attracted the attentions of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) which made a clandestine expose of the company. In videotapes, PETA showed technicians cutting monkeys while they were still alive, throwing them into cages, and various other disturbing actions. As a result of PETA's report, Proctor & Gamble, stopped doing business with HLS. Related Sites: Huntingdon Life Sciences Stop Huntingdon Cruelty |