5196106201

Hunt the oceans instead of

the classifieds.

As an Airborne Electronics Analyst in the RAAF, you 11 fly in a P3C Orion Maritime Surveillance aireraft, sweeping the oceans in search of “friend or (oe^ł submarines and ships. To apply, you must be at least 17.

Send off the coupon now for morę information.

I Pos* *Ws coupon to find Out mon* about your career as an RAAF Airhome Electronics Analyst to: RAAfI ■ Careers, Freejx»t 2600AF, GI*G Box XYZ (in the Capital City ncarest you).

Na mc__ ___________

• Address__.    _

I PhRtcode-Telephonc__iDateofBirth_

J Highest Educ. Ievel attained or being studied____

Or phonc an RAAF Careers Adviser on Adelaide 2121455. Brisbane 2262626- Canberra 57231L | Hobart 34 7077. Melbourne 6962677. Berth 325 6222 Sydney 2195555.

|____AJRBORNE ELECTRONICS ANALYST©RAAFj

Authnri»ł^b>ihr Dfpi of Orffinr    AFAC20J.QP.77A

ELECTRONICS Australia. September 1987

ancc designera, they had “cut their teeth” in the era of solenoids, relay contactors, cam sequencers and electro-magnetic clutches; the transition to modern electronics and microprocessor Controls didn*t come easily.

It didn’t take long for Laurie to dis-cover that appliance makers around the world were all having the same sort of problems. There was obviously an open-ing there, for an innovative designer who could combine a good knowledge of modern electronics with a sound un-derstanding of appliances. And so Appliance Control Systems was born.

Right from the start, it bccame obvi-ous that because of the appliance makers’ lack of experience with electronics, ACS would need to provide a “turnkey” design service. In other words, it wasn’t sufficient simply to design an electronics control module for some new' appliance, and then expect the appliance manufacturer’s own engi-neers to work out how it could be inte-grated with the rest of the product. It was necessary to produce a complete design package, covering the total inte-grated product — including manufactur-ing plans.

22

It also became elear that the appliance makers generally weren’t cquippcd to manufacture the electronic control-lera them’selves, even after they had been designed. They could generally make the rest of the appliances, but not the electronics.

So ACS soon found itself getting into manufacture as well as design — and high volume cost-efficient manufacture at that. The world’s appliance market is highly competitive, and every cent counts when it comes to the cost. The electronics in a controller module must combine very high reliability with the lowest possible price — the ultimate en-gineering challengef

But to become really efficient and cost competitive at high-volume manufacture, it was necessary to invest in the latest SMD assembly machinery, and in die and wire bonding machines. And so it was that towards the end of last year, ACS had to explore ways to raise the appropriate Capital.

Being sensible businessmen, and aware that they weren’t too experienced in high finance, Laurie and Greg sought advice from the experts. And with the benefit of hindsight, here’s where the

seeds of disaster started to be sown.

By the way, 1*11 have to be rather coy here about the names of the fmancial institutions, merchant banks, stockbro-kera and so on that were involved, for reasons that should become obvious.

The initial advice from a certain high-ly-respected commercial bank was to ac-quire a defunct public company, to fa-cilitate listing on the second board of the Sydney Stock Exchange. But when the recommended company was pur-chased, it tumed out to have unex-pected problems — like “forgotten” shareholders who suddenly appeared out of the woodwork, and a large out-standing debt (which by sheer coinci-dence, happened to be owing to a sub-sidiary of a certain highly-respected commercial bank . . . ).

Then an equally highly respected stockbroking and underwriting firm was consulted, for its advice and help on listing. Their advice was initially to list in late 1986, and invite public subscrip-tion for 30% of the company*s shares.

But then the executives at the stockbroking firm who were handling the project were fired. Other executives were assigned, but plans for the public listing started to slow down.

Of course a manufacturer can*t just keep on delaying plans for getting es-sential manufacturing plant — or the or-ders may go elsewhere. So the stockbroking firm advised getting a bank loan to allow' things to proceed in the meantime, and guaranteed the loan.

Then the advice started to change. Rather than list, it would be better to raise the required Capital by placing stock privately with two investment companies. This seemed to have advan-tages, so the new advice was taken. The shares were sold, and the investment companies invited to appoint directors to the ACS board (or strictly the Macro Resources board, for that was the holding company that had been acquired for that purpose).

Then things became even less amus-ing. Despite all the high-powered finan-cial advice, the actual amount of Capital raised by the sale of shares to the two investment companies turned out to be rather smali, after the various expenses and fees had been deducted — listing fees, stockbroker’s advice fees, underwriting fees and so on. In fact there was very little left — sorry about that! After all, you did want really professional ad-vicc . . .

But not to worry — one of the invest-ment companies would provide morę funds to finance the growth, by taking morę equity. By then, of course, there