Property management blow-up turns to planner mail-out
Cyre Trilogy has initiated a mail-out to financial planners to overcome Responsible Entity (RE) APGF Management's (APGF's) refusal to give up a unitholders register in the property managers' ongoing struggle for investor approval for a number of property trusts.
Cyre's letter called on financial planners to stop APGF's proposal to sell the management rights of a PFA property trust to Charter Hall because Cyre were unable to offer an alternative proposal without the register.
But APGF Managing Director Geoff McMahon said the APGF board believed it was acting in unitholders' best interests by refusing to provide the register to Cyre.
"Cyre Trilogy has a history of opportunistically attacking unlisted property funds for their own benefit and destroying unitholder value in the process," he said.
McMahon said the "financially stable and well-managed" Trust would not benefit from Cyre involvement and the board believed placing Charter Hall as RE would be in unitholders' best interest.
Cyre Trilogy director, Peter Arnold said APGF had breached the Corporations Act by not releasing the register within seven days of Cyre's request, which was sent 12 weeks ago.
He said the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) had also appealed to APGF to hand over the register, to no avail.
Arnold said the mail-out encouraged planners with PFA clients to support the right for alternative proposals and urge ASIC to force APGF to hand over the register. It asked planners to vote against or abstain from voting on APGF's proposal.
The APGF proposal included an upfront payment of $5 million and up to $4.8 million for selling and performance fees, according to Arnold who said Cyre's proposal would return fees to the trust for unitholders' benefit.
Cyre previously accused APGF of mismanagement of the trusts, and claimed one-upmanship when investors' final dividend picked up 3.5 cents one year after Cyre took over as RE.
But McMahon said unitholders had provided positive feedback for its proposal, with 98 per cent who had voted signing off on the deal.
APGF issued a Notice of Meeting (NOM) and Explanatory Memorandum (EM) requesting unitholders' vote for the sale of the trust to Charter Hall at a meeting on 25 July 2012.
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