Landmark buyer has little success

Press, 5 October 1984, Page 12

Landmark buyer has little success

PA Auckland An unidentified investor who stood in the market yesterday for 20 per cent of the voting capital of Landmark Properties, Ltd, achieved only modest success.

The offer is 50c each for an ordinary share and 37c each for a 15 per cent specified preference share. The brokers acting in the situation, Morrow and Benjamin of Auckland, said last evening that the day had yielded 666,582 ordinary shares and 230,320 spec, prefs.

The requirement is 6,276,979 ordinaries and 2 million spec, prefs for a total outlay of almost $3.9

million. Landmark’s chairman, Sir George Chapman, advised shareholders not to sell as the offer was “far too low” and a bonus issue is being planned. Morrow and Benjamin estimated the diluted net asset backing, inclusive of directors’ revaluations, at 39c a share.

A commercial analysis, Datex, put the figure at 33c. The managing director of Landmark, Mr O. M. Newland, who is also the largest shareholder in the company, termed the offer “impertinent, if not downright insulting,” as the net asset value of a Landmark share was about 60c.

Speculation as to the identity of the buyer ranged from Chase Corporation (categorical denial) to Robt. Jones Holdings (flat no), to the private investors S. J. and S. F. Smart, or Mr Anthony Hart. Neither party could be reached last evening.

Market sources regarded the Smart interests as the most likely. They recently divested Canterbury Arcade, in Auckland, to Landmark for a figure believed to have approached $5.8 million and have subsequently bought a Karangabape Road commercial building for more than $1 million.