Green Reit appears to be edging closer to the end of its life as a listed company, six years after floating on the stock market, as final bids for the Dublin offices and warehousing group were received by a deadline on Thursday.
It is believed that all three remaining bidders circling the company – California-based real estate group Kennedy Wilson, fast-growing UK property company Henderson Park and a unit of German savings bank DekaBank – met the deadline.
Meanwhile, beef magnate Larry Goodman, whose family investment vehicle Vevan Unlimited first disclosed at the end of June that it had been building up a stake in Green Reit, revealed in a stock-exchange filing that his interest has now risen to 2.85 per cent after additional share buying on Wednesday.
Mr Goodman is not known to be associated with any of the parties bidding for Green Reit and market commentators have speculated that he is betting that the company will trade for more than its latest reported net asset value (NAV) of €1.83 per shares, as of the end of December. He has been paying up to €1.82 for the stock.
Declined to comment
Spokesmen for Green Reit, Henderson Park and Mr Goodman and a spokeswoman For Kennedy Wilson declined to comment. Representatives for DekaBank did not respond to a request for comment.
The Green Reit portfolio includes Horizon Logistics Park, close to Dublin Airport and the M50 motorway; One Molesworth Street in Dublin city centre, which is partly let to British bank Barclays and Canadian investment bank TD Securities; and the Central Park office complex in Sandyford, in south Dublin.
The company surprised the market when it announced on April 15th that it had decided to sell itself or its portfolio, as its share price “has been subject to a material and persistent structural discount to its net asset value per share over three years now”. Green Reit shares were changing hands at €1.824 on Thursday.
Irish commercial property prices rose 2.2 per cent in the second quarter, year-on-year, according to the latest MSCI/SCSI Ireland real-estate index reading, published this week. Industrial space led the growth, at 4.8 per cent, while office property advanced 2.6 per cent, though the retail market posted a 0.3 per cent decline.
