Viwe Tlaleane

 
AFTER battling a counter-bid offer for listed property loan stock company MICC Property Income Fund from rival ApexHi Properties, Vukile Property Fund is now in the final stretch.

Well, almost.

At the moment, Vukile has managed to obtain 98,9% of MICC’s issued linked units and has invoked section 440K of the Companies Act to compulsorily acquire the remaining linked units in MICC.

But one unitholder — who holds fewer than 10000 MICC linked units — is refusing to budge. The unitholder, who owns 0,01% of MICC’s total issued capital, has rejected Vukile’s takeover offer and filed an application with the high court opposing Vukile’s notice to invoke section 440K.

Vukile intends opposing the application.

A date for the hearing has not yet been determined, so Vukile expects to wind up MICC and delist it only in the next few months.

Vukile CEO Gerhard van Zyl is confident Vukile will succeed in the court action.

The unitholder will have to convince the court that the offer from Vukile to MICC unitholders is unfair.

This is going to be a difficult one to pull off, seeing as 99% of unitholders have already accepted the offer.

Clearly, nearly all of them believe the offer is attractive, otherwise they would not have accepted it.

This last hurdle is more of an irritant than a serious concern for Vukile. Once the transaction is finalised, Vukile’s property assets will increase from R2,5bn to R3,5bn.