CANADIAN agribusiness Viterra, which acquired Australia's ABB Grain for $1.6 billion in September, says ABB was in breach of its loan covenants at October 31.
But Viterra said today that it had been in talks with ABB's lenders and had received a waiver in respect of the breach.
"We have been working hard to implement changes in Australian operations to strengthen business processes and accountability for bottom-line results,'' Viterra chief financial officer Rex McLennan said in a statement.
"We are confident that our Australian operations will achieve significant earnings recovery in 2010 given the larger than average crop in the region, leadership changes in key positions, and a more disciplined, sharper focus on business execution to achieve its financial performance targets.''
Viterra said the integration of ABB was on track, and Viterra would announce a new leader of the Australia and New Zealand businesses in the coming weeks.
Viterra said that since September, it had restructured its Australian grain operations to align storage and handling, transportation, logistics and grain marketing into a single ``pipeline'' model.
The company is also implementing better financial management processes to ensure financial administration and reporting practices in the southern hemisphere were aligned with North American standards.
Viterra will release its consolidated financial results on January 21, 2010, which will include about five weeks of ABB results and consolidation of ABB's debt.
