The announcement said the Bonatla asset-management contract held by Catalyst had been renegotiated and maintained on a short-term basis.
Catalyst executives Jonathan Broll and Royden du Plooy have resigned from Bonatla's board.
Speculation about a dispute between a consortium of Bonatla shareholders led by founding director Niki Vontas and Catalyst emerged towards the end of last year, with signs that there was disagreement over Bonatla's strategic direction.
The two parties had downplayed the dispute.
Bonatla was set for a major overhaul of its capital structure that could have transformed the group into a property loan stock company last year.
The company, however, did a U-turn, and the explanation provided was that better alternatives had emerged.
Concrete signs of the dispute came from Catalyst's reluctance to publish an offer for Bonatla's assets made by Fairvest, a Vontas company.
The Fairvest offer appeared to have been Vontas's move to frustrate Catalyst's other plans on Bonatla.
Catalyst had said the Fairvest announcement of an offer for Bonatla's assets was premature, and that was why it had not reacted with a public statement.
Catalyst said at the time that Bonatla had been considering a number of other alternatives on top of the Fairvest offer.
However, Catalyst did not think twice when it published the Redefine offer for Bonatla's assets, which came a few weeks ago.
Vontas said the reconstitution of the asset-management contract put Bonatla in a good position to do the best possible deal for shareholders.
This is in the light of two offers for Bonatla's assets from Fairvest and Redefine.
Redefine offered a total of R564m for Bonatla's assets. The offer was to be settled through R88m in its own linked units plus the assumption of R20m of shortterm debt and Bonatla's mortgage debts of up to R456m.
Redefine has said its offer translated to 58,3c a Bonatla share, and was far better than the Fairvest offer.
Fairvest has offered 157,3-million of its new linked units priced at 100c a unit and would assume liability for up to R20m and the mortgage bonds against the Bonatla properties.
Vontas agreed that there was tension between Catalyst and a group of Bonatla shareholders, but said they have been resolved amicably. 'We part as friends.'
This move may give Vontas an edge over Redefine, whose sister company ApexHi has also made a R243,3m offer for Fairvest assets.
Yesterday's statement said Bonatla had done this in order to provide itself with a greater flexibility with regard to various offers for its R670m assets.
Bonatla's share price closed unchanged at 50c on the JSE Securities Exchange SA yesterday.
Catalyst was not available for comment.
Business Day
Publisher: Business Day
Source: Business Day
