MLC, Lend Lease in new merchant bank

Press, 23 June 1981, Page 19

MLC, Lend Lease in new merchant bank

The life assurance group, MLC,. and the property developer. Lend Lease — already closely linked — have further cemented their ties with their decision to take part in the establishment of a new merchant bank in Australia.

To be called Amro Australia, Ltd, it will be owned bv three shareholders — the Amsterdam-Rotterdam Bank (Amro) of The Netherlands (40 per cent), the MLC (40 per cent), and Lend Lease (20 per cent). It will have an issued capital of $lO million and its first managing director will be Mr Romeo van der Borch, who is a senior executive of the Amro Bank. Amro Australia will have its headquarters in Sydney and it proposes to establish offices in Melbourne and other. Australian cities.

In conjunction with the announcement of the new merchant bank, the MLC and Lend Lease have issued both to the Amro Bank and to each other.

The MLC. has allotted 723.000 of its shares — just under 10 per cent of its capital — at 780 c a share. 50c below market price at time of issue.

The shares were; initially issued to the ■ Amro i Bank, which subsequently transferred 326,000 of them to Lend Lease in exchange for 565.000 Lend Lease shares? In addition. Lend Lease has alloted 355.000 of its shares to the MLC. and another 55,500 to the Amro Bank. The issue price was 450 c, 25c below market, at time of issue. The result of these share issues is that Lend Lease now has a 19.1 per cent interest in the MLC, the MLC has a 16 per cent interest in

Lend Lease, and the Amro Bank has a 5 per cent interest in the MLC and a 0.9 per cent interest in Lend Lease. However, Lend Lease w'as not an original participant in the formation of the merchant bank. When it was initially structured, the idea was that the Amro Bank and MLC would each hold a . 50 per cent interest. But this proved unacceptable to the Foreign Investment Review Board, which required a higher Australian content. (The largest shareholder in the MLC is the London-based Alliance Assurance group, which had 21 per cent of the MLCs capital before the recent allotment.) The other major shareholder in the MLC is Mr

Ronald Brierley's Industrial Equity, which, has had its interest in the MLC reduced from 14.3 to. 13 per cent as a .result of the MLCs share allotment. There will be seven directors’on the board of the new merchant bank, three each from Amro and the MLC and one from Lend Lease. The directors will be F. Hoogendijk (chairman). M. H. Allen. G. J. Dusscldorp. P. Oosthuizen, B. J. D. Page. J. M. Troy, and Mr van der Borch. -