Kerr too busy to attend Pyne Gould AGM, focuses on Perpetual sale

Wednesday 28th November 2012

Pyne Gould Corp said its managing director and controlling shareholder George Kerr is too busy closing the sale of wealth manager Perpetual Group to attend the company's annual meeting in Auckland today.

Kerr's Australasian Equity Partners Fund No. 1 owns 76 percent of Pyne Gould, having failed this year to take the company private. He is currently overseas closing the deal, the company said in an update to the NZX today.

"Unfortunately I am unable to attend as we are working to a tight timeline to achieve a quality exit from Perpetual by calendar year's end," Kerr is quoted as saying in the statement. "This is a major priority to preserve value for shareholders."

The annual shareholders' meeting held at 2pm today on Level 17 of the AMP Centre in Auckland.

The shares last traded at 26 cents and have declined18 percent this year. Kerr paid 37 cents a share to take control of the company, while warning that the difficult process of selling assets meant Pyne Gould was no longer a generator of dividend income.

Selling Perpetual will leave Pyne Gould with no direct operating businesses in New Zealand. Its Torchlight Investment Group owns 19.7 percent of investor Torchlight Fund 1, which runs until 2019, and Torchlight Fund 2, which holds the remaining bad loans carved off when Marac Finance was sold into Heartland New Zealand.

Pyne Gould's Torchlight Securities owns 27 percent of Equity Partners Infrastructure Company No. 1 which in turn owns 17 percent of UK motorway services company Moto International Holdings.

BusinessDesk.co.nz

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