AXA sets it straight
On Friday the 14 April, The Australian featured an article titled: “AXA plans $3bn liquidation” which alleges that AXA is planning to liquidate its $3 billion property portfolio. This could not be further from the truth.
On Friday the 14 April, The Australian featured an article titled: “AXA plans $3bn liquidation” which alleges that AXA is planning to liquidate its $3 billion property portfolio. This could not be further from the truth.
As we have stated previously, AXA Australia has decided to change the nature of the property holdings in our statutory funds from direct investments to indirect in-vestments in the form of listed and unlisted property trusts. The statutory funds are the areas where the investments of our life insurance policyholders are held. We currently have $1.2 billion worth of direct property in these funds and this will be sold during the next three years. Approximately half of this amount may be ac-quired by property trusts which AXA manages, leaving $500m (including $200m of rural properties) to be sold on the open market.
We have made this decision to deliver better investment returns to our policyhold-ers. While direct property is a very worthwhile investment, our policyholders re-quire more liquid investments today than that which can be achieved through prop-erty trusts.
This figure of $1.2 billion is obviously a long way from the $3 billion stated in the article. It is important to appreciate that the properties held in the statutory funds are not the only property investments AXA Australia holds. We have two unlisted property trusts which hold properties worth approximately $1 billion plus that AXA Australia Diversified Property Trust which holds properties also worth about $1 billion.
Martin Hession
General Manager Property
AXA Australia
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