ANZO investors ignore ACC warnings, vote for corporatisation

Thursday 21st October 2010 5 Comments

AMP NZ Office Trust investors shrugged off warnings from the major shareholder Accident Compensation Corp. and voted in favour of restructuring the unit trust into a company.

Between 81% and 83% of shareholders supported the resolution to convert ANZO into a company and introduce a new fee for manager AMP Haumi Management.

That comes after ACC, which owns 8.9% of ANZO, said it would oppose the move because it would remove investors' ability to dump the manager, which it claims has caused a loss in value for shareholders.

ANZO will suspend trading in its shares next week and will corporatise its structure from November, and Don Huse and Graeme Wong will join the board as independent directors at that time.

"The new board and the new executive team will now be required to perform for investors under this regime," chairman Craig Stobo said in a statement.

The manager cut its fee further to sway other institutional investors who'd aired their concerns with the property entity, after an independent adviser report by KordaMentha said the offer was "significantly higher than the market leading fee models."

The manager's original offer was to cut its base fee to 0.55% of the portfolio's value up to $1 billion, and 0.45% above $1 billion, down from 0.65% of gross assets.

Once it gets the appropriate approvals it will add another level of 0.35% for the value of any property above $1.5 billion.

ACC will call for a meeting of unitholders in a bid to dump AMP Haumi as manager.

Investment manager Nicholas Bagnall said the manager has not only underperformed, but "also imposed unreasonable fees."

The shares were unchanged at 77 cents in trading today.

Businesswire.co.nz

Comments from our readers

On 21 October 2010 at 4:22 pm antoni said:

Finally a corporate with guts ignored by mums and dads who havent got a clue.

On 21 October 2010 at 4:59 pm Wazza said:

What about the AMP shareholders who's 50% share in the management contract has just been devalued by a lower base fee for the sake of ANZO's unit holders. Take from one shareholder and give to another.

On 22 October 2010 at 8:48 am Ian said:

10/10 to ACC for its stance. 0/10 for its timing. It should have come out much earlier and organised opposition from other shareholders.

On 22 October 2010 at 9:07 am Listing Helps said:

Listing must work in favour of the investors, because if you grab the investment statement for the AMP Capital NZ Property Fund (which like ANZOs is managed by AMP Capital), it says the management fee is 1.00% per annum, and it doesn't look like there is any roposal to reduce this. Both funds are unit trusts, so I guess the only difference is one is listed (plus it also looks like the unlisted one is having some sort of liquidty problem). Can't imagine ACC would be too happy to be in the unlisted one if they have a beef with the ANZO fees and the way it has een managed! Maybe they should be happy with what they have got......at least they have the option to sell their holding in the ANZo, unlike the investors in the other fund!

On 22 October 2010 at 9:10 am Listing Helps said:

Listing must work in favour of the investors, because if you grab the investment statement for the AMP Capital NZ Property Fund (which like ANZOs is managed by AMP Capital), it says the management fee is 1.00% per annum, and it doesn't look like there is any proposal to reduce this. Both funds are unit trusts, so I guess the only difference is one is listed (plus it also looks like the unlisted one is having some sort of liquidty problem). Can't imagine ACC would be too happy to be in the unlisted one if they have a beef with the ANZO fees and the way it has been managed! Maybe they should be happy with what they have got......at least they have the option to sell their holding in the ANZO, unlike the investors in the other fund!