Management rights sale

MARKET RELEASE
Management rights sale

Following the announcements made earlier today by the shareholder of Vital Healthcare Management Limited („VHML or „Manager) and NorthWest Value Partners Inc („NorthWest), Bill Thurston and Graeme Horsley, the Independent Directors of the Manager of Vital Healthcare Property Trust („Trust or „VHP) confirm that they have received advice from the shareholder of the Manager (OnePath (NZ) Limited, a subsidiary of ANZ New Zealand), that OnePath has conditionally sold to NorthWest all the shares in VHML.

The Independent Directors have also been advised that AUT Investments (an ANZ subsidiary) has sold its 9% holding of units in VHP to NorthWest and NorthWest now holds approximately 19.8% of the units on issue in VHP.

The Independent Directors have had brief preliminary discussions with representatives of NorthWest and at this point have formed a favourable initial view of the prospects for the Trust and unitholders as a result of NorthWests investment. NorthWest have an association with a similar publicly listed healthcare real estate investment trust in Canada, and describe themselves as “Canadas Healthcare Landlord”.

It is understood that the conditional matters are of a regulatory nature only and that subject to an early resolution it is likely that settlement will occur prior to the end of the year. Transitional arrangements are being finalised that will ensure the orderly transition of the management activities of the Trust and Manager.

We believe it is the intention of NorthWest to retain the current management team, although this is still to be resolved directly with those employees.

Bill Thurston said “whilst this now takes any internalisation opportunity off the table for the foreseeable future, we will still certainly engage with NorthWest to promote corporatisation as an alignment opportunity that they should consider at a future date”.

“Certainly the Independent Directors expect NorthWest to continue to conclude the outstanding fee review, confirm the appointment of an Australian based director to the Board of the Manager and also consider the corporatisation of the Trust” said Mr Thurston.

We hope to have the opportunity to shortly engage in greater detail with NorthWest and once further relevant information is available we will certainly pass that on to unitholders.

– ENDS –

© Scoop Media