New Valley Corp, the company which took a 5.05% stake in Red Brick Systems Inc just prior to Thursday’s announcement of a definitive agreement from Informix Corp to acquire the company (CI No 3,512), issued a statement on Friday opposing the acquisition. As a major shareholder of Red Brick Systems, New Valley opposes the proposed acquisition of Red Brick by Informix, the company said, styling the $35m price offered as grossly inadequate, offering a meager current premium in Informix stock of questionable value. The deal was not in the best interests of shareholders, it said. New Valley has investment banking and brokerage interests, and also deals in real estate development in Russia, and real-estate management in the US. It is a subsidiary of Brooke Group Ltd, owned by financier Bennett LeBow, also the majority owner of the US’s fifth largest cigarette firm Liggett Group Inc. New Valley owns a 73% stake in data mining company Thinking Machines Corp, which sold the parallel processing side of its business off to Sun Microsystems Inc in 1996 after a protracted period under chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. New Valley, which said it acquired the stake in the first place in order to influence material business decisions, had proposed a business combination between Thinking Machines and Red Brick.
