New offer on Evergreen trumps Super fund bid

Evergreen Forests says it has received a $115 million offer for most of its forests from an Australian fund manager, trumping a $112 million bid from a Government pension fund.

Evergreen said James Fielding Funds Management, an arm of property developer Mirvac Group, raised its bid from an original $104.2 million for Evergreen's North Island forests, which make up 90 per cent of its assets.

Late last month the Government's Superannuation Fund topped James Fielding's original offer with a $112 million bid. The revised Australian offer was worth about 34c a share in net proceeds, and James Fielding had agreed to try to get a loan to Evergreen reassigned to another lender, so penalty fees for early repayment of the loan could be avoided.

Shares in Evergreen, which owns or has cutting rights to 19,180ha of pine forests, closed up 6.1 per cent at 35c.

The group put the assets up for sale in March. The land was valued at $43.5 million at the end of June, while the crop of trees was valued at $90.6 million. Evergreen recently sold some of its forestry rights in the South Island for $3.4 million, and has been looking at the possibility of putting a wind farm on its land.

The Superannuation Fund is a state-owned fund with assets of about $4 billion, set up in 2002 to part-fund future Government pension costs.

Its assets are mainly in local and international equities and fixed income, but it has said it might invest in forestry, infrastructure, private equity and commodities.

- REUTERS