charter hall, page-2

i guess the two most important questions from my perspective (as a unit holder) will be

a)over the long term can/will charter hall provide better management than as per the current situation

b) in the short term will the market re-rate the trust once it gets removed from the macquarie vampires

i think the market reacted relatively mutely to the announcement because we dont know the details of the deal yet, all we know is that one is well advanced and that MOF/MCW wont be around in their current form in the medium term

re: the actual deal with charter, i find it very interesting from a strategic context given charter hall are a domestic player, and not even a really large one at that - i cannot imagine them wanting to take on the US/Euro assets, which are currently weighing down the macquarie funds

maybe we could see a good MOF/bad MOF type split like the MIG deal

as another option, and as mentioned in the media reports, if you bundled together the domestic retail and office assets of MCW and MOF the market would be expected to rerate in line with other big vanilla trusts like gpt

my biggest worry with charter hall is that they are not a big enough manager to absorb funds of this size - they have fund AUM circa 3.8 billion across 9 unlisted funds - MOF and MCQ combined are near circa 10 billion.

charter would effectively be tripling AUM in one deal, which i personalyl think isnt at all appetising, regardless of the existing macquarie management and structure being retained

i've held the belief for a long time that the typical unitholders attitude towards trust management is ridiculous - trust management such as the case with the mac satellites need to be viewed as essentially contractors, and contractors typically competitively bid and are easily disposed of and replaced