KEY POINTS:
One of the most controversial corporate real estate sagas looks to be coming to an end with the owner of Trans Tasman Properties reaching a deal enabling it to buy out all remaining dissenting shareholders.
The company, which sprang partly from Robt Jones Investments, now looks set to
disappear from the corporate scene following a deal struck by majority shareholder SEA, of Hong Kong, to get complete control of the NZX-listed company.
SEA, controlled by Jesse Lu, said yesterday it had reached an agreement to get 90.6 per cent of TTP after a "lockup" agreement with the Accident Compensation Corporation and LIM Asia Arbitrage Fund.
TTP - which two years ago shifted its offices from Auckland to Singapore - has paid no dividend to its shareholders for many years, had legal wrangles with dissenting shareholders and taken some to court.
Until yesterday morning, SEA controlled just over 80 per cent of TTP. But yesterday it said it was making a full takeover offer at 60 cents and a notice saying it had reached the agreements.
Reaching a 90 per cent shareholding allows SEA to compulsorily acquire the remaining shares in TTP.
The acquisition will bring to an end the long-running and sometimes acrimonious saga of SEA's bid for complete ownership of TTP.
SEA has made a series of takeover offers in the last two years, but many have been criticised for being too low.
The company has also become a much-diminished entity. In 2005, TTP shareholders voted to spin off three-quarters of their property assets into a new London-listed entity.
Four TTP Hong Kong property developments valued at $283m were shunted into the new entity, Asian Growth Properties, listed in Britain but based in the British Virgin Islands.
TTP lost $3.4 million after-tax in the last calendar year, even after selling a large number of its properties in the Viaduct Harbour and Sydney.
Arthur Lim, investment director at Macquarie, said the deal was the best outcome because it would allow SEA to pursue a strategy of taking on riskier markets and development opportunities.
"It's a good solution. SEA's view of property has always been it's more about capital growth than dividends but New Zealand investors' idea of property investments is yield," said Lim.
"If one thinks about what they have done, it's to move out of New Zealand and into the booming Asian market and a few years ago there was concerns it was not the right thing to do.
"Well in fact it was the right thing to do. But there's always been a difference of opinion between the majority shareholder and the New Zealand minority shareholders."
