Strategic receiver hints at property sales this week

The stalled Soho Square development in Auckland's Ponsonby. Photo / Paul Estcourt

Strategic Finance debenture holders should find out this Friday when they'll get their first repayment from the failed property lender's receivers and how much it will be.

The receivers, PricewaterhouseCoopers' John Fisk and Colin McCloy, had been due to provide their second update by July 30.

However, on PwC's website they now say given several property transactions "scheduled to occur in the first week of August", they've delayed their second update for a week until August 6.

"Subject to these property transactions occurring as scheduled, we expect to be able to announce the timing and quantum of the first interim distribution to secured debenture investors," the receivers say.

This will be the first estimate of how much money the receivers expect to recover.

In their first letter to investors' on May 5 Fisk and McCloy also said they were hopeful they would have sold Strategic's loan book by July 30. However, last week PwC told interest.co.nz there were still interested parties doing due diligence on the loan book and the sales process wasn't likely to be completed until mid-August.

In May's letter Fisk and McCloy said the loan book consisted of 87 loans with a total net book value of NZ$229.1 million.

When Strategic's investors voted for a moratorium that aimed to repay them 100 per cent of their principal investments plus interest through asset realisations in December 2008, the loan book was valued at NZ$477 million.

About 13,000 Strategic investors are owed about NZ$417 million. Strategic, which counted former All Blacks captain and New Zealand Rugby Union chairman Jock Hobbs among its directors and whose CEO was Kerry Finnigan, was involved in financing Auckland's Soho Square development, the Sentinel Tower project in Takapuna and the Fiji Hilton.

Trustee Perpetual Trust called in the receivers after Strategic failed to generate sufficient loan recoveries for a repayment to investors' that was due in January. And last week Perpetual Trust appointed Corporate Finance's John Cregton and Andrew McKay as liquidators.

It says this was to preserve "certain potential claims" that are available to liquidators and not to receivers under the Companies Act 1993 but that the liquidation won't impact on the receivership.


INTEREST.CO.NZ