KEY POINTS:
Investors in listed landlord the National Property Trust are being encouraged to vote next week against fee-structure changes.
Mark Lister, an analyst at ABN Amro, has spoken out against the changes due to go before National unitholders next Tuesday.
National has commercial, retail and industrial properties in Auckland, Napier, Tauranga, Wellington and Christchurch which are valued at $313 million and are managed by Wellington's St Laurence.
The trust will hold its annual meeting and special meeting in Auckland on Tuesday afternoon in an event predicted to be one of the more hostile on the corporate events calendar.
Already, major investor the Cushing family has revealed it would lead a revolt against the changes. The family's investment vehicle, H&G, said it would vote its 5.5 million units in National against fee changes.
David Cushing said he had talked to many of the top 20 unitholders and found dissatisfaction among them. St Laurence could not vote on the key resolutions, he said.
Other major institutional investors have complained about the new fee structure, saying it serves the interests of the managers but not the unitholders.
National's managers are proposing to reduce the base fee for managing the trust. The managers want to charge a performance fee linked to the NZX Property Index, and if National's performance beat the index, St Laurence would get 10 per cent of the gains under the new rules.
Lister predicted the changes might eventually work against unitholders' interests. "If the sector recovers from current levels, we believe National has above-average potential to outperform, given its discount to net tangible assets. This would lead to the manager receiving a healthy performance fee and unitholders could be forgiven for seeing the change in fee structure as opportunistic in terms of its timing." He called on unitholders to vote against resolutions 4, 5 and 6.
* National Property Trust's annual meeting is at 2pm next Tuesday at Ellerslie Event Centre, Greenlane, Auckland. A special meeting will be held afterwards.
