Colonial rallies office trust stakeholders
Colonial First State Investmentshas confirmed it has had discussions with “all relevant entities” regarding its concern over the sale of the Lend Lease US Office Trust toMorgan Stanley.
Colonial, which has a 22 per cent stake in the trust, has also confirmed its intent to vote in favour of removing Lend Lease as responsible entity and replacing it with Principal Real Estate Investors (Australia) at a meeting of unitholders scheduled for November 14.
“CFSI [Colonial] confirms its intention to vote in favour of the resolutions in the absence of compelling new information being released to the market in relation to the trust,” Colonial announced to theAustralian Stock Exchangetoday.
In the meantime, Lend Lease has appointed Grant Samuel & Associates to ensure all concerned parties are informed of the proposal and upcoming meeting, however given Colonial has now confirmed its lobbying of the issues to the relevant parties this is unlikely to be an issue.
Lend Lease has also requested that Grant Samuel analyse the merits of the property group being retained as the responsible entity of the trust post-sale to Morgan Stanley, the merits of Principal being appointed as a replacement and also to consider any alternative proposals.
The major stakeholders in the US office trust includeUBS Global Asset Management(8.8 per cent),Barclays Global Investors(6.6 per cent),BT Financial Group(5.6 per cent) andAMP Henderson Global Investors(5 per cent).
Recommended for you
With the final tally for FY25 now confirmed, how many advisers left during the financial year and how does it compare to the previous year?
HUB24 has appointed Matt Willis from Vanguard as an executive general manager of platform growth to strengthen the platform’s relationships with industry stakeholders.
Investment manager Drummond Capital Partners has announced a raft of adviser-focused updates, including a practice growth division, relaunched manager research capabilities, and a passive model portfolio suite.
When it comes to M&A activity, the share of financial buyers such as private equity firms in Australia fell from 67 per cent to 12 per cent in the last financial year.
