St Laurence holds out

National Property Trust has at long last succeeded in its battle to get control of Newmarket Property Trust but it is still left with an irritating rump of minority shareholders.

National’s bid was conditional only on it getting at least 50% acceptance and it now has nearly 87%, but it needs at least 90% before it can compulsorily acquire the rest.

The major hold out is property syndicator St Laurence which owns nearly 7%.

"The reason we’re taking this stance is that we invested (in Newmarket) because of the properties. We were pretty comfortable with Newmarket and we would rather invest in it rather than National," says St Laurence chief executive Kevin Podmore.

"When we assess these things, we’re not the same as other investors. Given our syndication background, we try to back into specific properties," he says.

Newmarket owns three properties in Auckland, the AA building, the Rialto Heart of Broadway building and the Carlton DFK Centre.

Podmore says it would have been different if National had been offering cash, but, he has no interest in investing in National, even though he admits it has a better portfolio.

National offered 6 National units for every 10 Newmarket units held. That’s worth about 50 cents a Newmarket unit (where the units are trading) compared with the trust’s net asset backing at 30 June of 57 cents a unit.

Podmore approves of National’s publicly announced plans for the Newmarket properties, including its plan to sell the AA Centre and upgrade the other two buildings.

"Hopefully what’s in their interests is going to be in our interests," he says. He’s talked to enough of the other holdouts to be sure that National won’t get to 90%, Podmore says.

Newmarket remains listed for now, but it no longer meets the Stock Exchange’s listing rule requiring at least 500 unitholders. National executive chairman Paul Dallimore says the holdouts number less than 100 investors and about 40 of those are gone, no addresses. He remains confident National will eventually get 100%.

Commenting is closed