JOHANNESBURG (Business Day) -- An array of legal activities will take place next week as Harmony's hostile bid for Gold Fields enters the home stretch.
Harmony expects to hear from the Labour Court next week whether the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) has won its attempt to delay the retrenchment of 4900 workers at unprofitable shafts in Free State.
The most elaborate legal hearing will be at the Competition Commission, which begins a hearing into the proposed takeover on Tuesday.
Fearing that the legal tussles will be protracted, the tribunal has said it is prepared to continue into the following weekend, if necessary.
Harmony's deadline for the bid is May 20. It wants some breathing space after the tribunal's ruling, as approval by the competition authorities would be the last condition attached to the offer.
It is expected that, in the end, the tribunal will approve the offer, but analysts and investors want to see what conditions, if any, are attached to the approval.
The commission has recommended there should be a ceiling on retrenchments after the merger, and that the jobs of ordinary mineworkers should not be affected.
Also on Tuesday, there will be a hearing involving Gold Fields, which is planning to take the Securities Regulation Panel (SRP) - the stock market regulator - to the high court, alleging that bias was shown in favour of Harmony.
Gold Fields alleges the SRP should not have approved the two-step structure of the Harmony bid, nor should it have allowed an extension of the period for the bid to allow time for the competition authorities to complete their hearings.
Because of the time it is taking for this case to come to court, Gold Fields will next week seek an urgent interdict which could halt the implementation of the Harmony offer until the case against the SRP has been decided.
The case is being brought not just against the SRP, but also against two of its top officials.
In yet another challenge for Harmony's legal team, an appeal hearing is being held next week against a recent ruling in support of a government order that Harmony and other neighbours of DRDGOLD's liquidated mines near Klerksdorp should help fund the costs - about R85m a year - of pumping at the two mines.
Harmony has warned that such a financial burden could threaten the viability of its own mine.
CE Bernard Swanepoel has said that the government order had set a dangerous precedent.
Meanwhile, Harmony spokesman Brenton Saunders said this week the company expected to hear next week the outcome of a case brought by the NUM to challenge retrenchments in Free State.
He said that even if the union were to succeed this would only delay the process as Harmony had followed the law in consulting its workers in the run-up to the retrenchments.
Gold Fields releases its financial results today and is expected to use the opportunity to contrast its own profitability with Harmony's losses.
