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).
AUTHOR
Craig Phillips
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