The Canadian co-owners of Canary Wharf today made a dramatic intervention in the takeover battle for specialist property company Tritax EuroBox with a recommended £1.1 billion cash bid that trumped a previous offer from warehouse developer Segro.
Toronto headquartered Brookfield, which is 50% owner of Canary Wharf alongside the Qatari Investment Authority and has around $1 trillion of assets under management, has offered 69p in cash. That represents a 6% premium to the Segro all share proposal which was worth 65.1p to Tritax shareholders.
The new offer values Tritax at £557 million and implies an enterprise value of approximately £1.102 billion including debt.In the UK Brookfield also owns the Center Parks holiday resorts business as well as trophy City office buildings including 100 Bishopsgate and One Leadenhall. It is one of the biggest private investors in the UK with around £57 billion of assets, employing more than 23,000 people directly or indirectly.
The board of Tritax, which owns logistics hubs and distribution centres in Continental Europe, described the new proposal as “attractive” and switched its recommendation to the Brookfield offer.
The company said in a statement to shareholders this morning that it had “engaged with both Brookfield and Segro since receipt of Brookfield’s latest proposal and has considered the terms proposed by each bidder carefully, noting the scope for the implied value of the Segro offer to increase or decrease between now and completion, as compared to a fixed cash amount from Brookfield.
Robert Orr, the Chair of Tritax EuroBox, said: “The board of Tritax EuroBox remains intensely focused on delivering value for Tritax EuroBox shareholders. The cash offer from Brookfield represents a premium to the current value of the SEGRO offer and ensures that Tritax EuroBox shareholders will benefit from a significant uplift over the undisturbed value of their investment with flexibility to reinvest as they see fit.”
Brad Hyler, Head of Real Estate in Europe at Brookfield, where former Bank of England Governor Mark Carney serves as a vice chair, said: “Tritax EuroBox has a high-quality portfolio of logistics assets in strategic locations across Europe. These assets are complementary to our existing portfolio and, using our global real estate expertise, we will actively manage these assets, provide access to capital, help build new relationships with our network of tenants and support the overall growth of the platform.”
Brookfield said in June that it was in the “early stages of assessing a possible cash offer” for Tritax EuroBox.
In a statement issued to the stock exchange after the Brookfield offer Segro said its all share offer “would enable Tritax EuroBox shareholders to retain exposure to the European industrial and logistics sector at this point in the cycle, in the largest and most liquid REIT in Europe, or realise their position for cash given the significant liquidity in Segro's shares.”
