ALMOST 20 per cent of Gordon Fell's three Rubicon property trusts were crossed in special sales a few minutes after the market closed yesterday, the mystery buyer believed to be either Macquarie Group or Mr Fell himself.
In December, Allco Finance Group paid more than $320 million in a scrip-and-cash deal for the Rubicon Group, which manages the three trusts.
Rubicon America Trust, Rubicon Europe Trust and Rubicon Japan Trust each had tens of millions of shares crossed yesterday, pushing the stock prices off their record lows. All up, the market capitalisation of the three trusts is $235 million.
The trusts were pummelled in share-market trading on Friday, when they reported their results, each trust stopping payments of distributions to conserve cash and promised substantial asset sales (Japan of up to $600 million, Europe up to $700 million and the America up to $800 million) to reduce debts over the next 12 months.
Rubicon America jumped 8 per cent yesterday to close at 13.5c as 91 million shares changed hands, Rubicon Japan jumped 15 per cent to 26c on 71 million shares and Rubicon Europe jumped 25 per cent to 15c as 97 million shares went through. All traded at or near $1 in the past year.
Macquarie Group is believed to have been looking at the three trusts for the past week, and Mr Fell is believed to see value in them and is looking at using them as a way to quarantine himself from the Allco group.
Across the three trusts, the property portfolio is valued at $4.3 billion as at December 31 and a mezzanine loan book worth $862 million, although investors are sceptical about the value of the property portfolio.
The group has debts of $3.5billion, some due in the next few months.
RAT Price at posting:
0.0¢ Sentiment: None Disclosure: Not Held
