more good news in the age paper

Centro wins time to sell retail assets
Email Print Normal font Large font AdvertisementDanny John and Carolyn Cummins
February 13, 2008 - 12:04AM

BANKERS to crippled property group Centro have given it an additional two-month lifeline to help avoid a fire sale of its valuable Australian retailing assets.

Facing a deadline this Friday to put a new refinancing plan in place to reduce the $3.9 billion of debt it is carrying, Centro now has until the middle of April to carry out an orderly auction of key parts of its shopping mall portfolio.

Details of the package, said to have been agreed in principle with its main bankers including ANZ, Commonwealth and National Australia Bank, which between them are owed $500 million, are due to be announced on Friday morning.

The deal will take some of the financial heat off Centro after its attempts to reduce the cost of servicing its huge debts last month got caught up in the global liquidity crisis.

The crisis resulted in wider shareholder concerns about the complexity of Centro's corporate structure and its exposure to the finances of various property trusts that had been spun off from the Australian and US retail centre operator.

New chief executive Glenn Rufrano, a US property executive, has spent the past four weeks negotiating with the group's main backers to relieve the pressure to sell assets.

Mr Rufrano, who previously headed New Plan Excel Realty which was acquired last May by Centro for $6 billion, is well known to the US banking and financial community whose concerns about Centro's debt exposure caused lenders to start calling in their loans.