Centro Property Trust and Centro Properties Limited (Centro) will not pay a distribution to ordinary security holders for the six months until the end of this financial year, it announced yesterday.

At the same time, Centro MCS Manager Limited, the responsible entity for Centro Retail Trust and Centro Retail Limited (CER), announced an estimated distribution to ordinary security holders of $32 million or 1.4 cents per stapled security for the same period.

Under the constitutions of the companies, taxable income is required to be distributed.

However, CPT Manager Limited (CPT), the responsible entity for Centro, expects that Centro will not make any taxable income for the 2008 financial year.

The Centro statement said that while it expects to make an operating distributable profit for the year, it has incurred significant non-operating refinancing and adviser fees.

In March this year, Money Management reported that litigation funding firm IMF had announced that it would fund shareholder class actions against Centro Properties and Centro Retail.

The claims against each of the companies related to alleged breaches of their continuous disclosure obligations between August 2007 and February this year.