Tower life firms offload group stock
Tower AustraliaandTower Life(New Zealand) have divested their complete holdings in parent company Tower Limited this morning following the sale of almost 10 million shares in the trans-Tasman group.
According to Wellington-based Tower chief financial officer William Geisbers, the freed up capital will be invested by both life companies according to the investment mandates of the policies held with them.
“We decided to sell the holdings as share holdings in yourself are not very capital efficient, and besides this the other key reason is under Tower’s accounting policy we had to reverse these holdings upon consolidation,” Geisbers says.
The sale of the 9,767,952 Tower shares had a market capitalisation of about $10.7 million, with the realisation of the stock split more or less equally between theAustralian Stock Exchangeand the New Zealand Stock Exchanges for the dual listed group.
Geisbers says while he doesn’t have immediate access to the details of those who purchased the freed up stock he believes it was scooped up by a collection of Asian, Australian and New Zealand investors .
As the shares were held as part of the investments of the policy holders in the life companies and not by the groups themselves, the monies generated from the sales will not be used towards repaying any Tower debts, Geisbers says.
“It’s nothing major, it’s just simplifying and clearing up the group really,” he adds.
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