Becton remains in ASX trading halt
The Bank of Scotland International has offloaded $200 million worth of corporate and project debt in the listed property company Becton Group.
The buyers are understood to be a consortium of Goldman Sachs and the United States hedge fund Fortress Investment Group.
Becton has a market capitalisation of just $3.4 million and has been looking for a way to stabilise its longer-term structure.
But the latest scenario suggests a likely tussle between Becton's incoming lenders and the company's major shareholders including Telopea Capital, Mariner Corporation and Titanium Property Investment.
“We have sold our holdings in Becton,” a spokeswoman for BOS International told the Austraian Financial Review on Friday, noting that settlement of the transaction was imminent.
But Becton is still not in a position to be expansive on what had happened or what the consequences could following its securing a trading halt on Friday January 4, 2013, noting it would update investors in “due course”.
“The trading halt is being sought in relation to incomplete information which has come to Becton’s attention regarding the possible sale by Becton’s corporate debt provider of the debt owned by Becton to that debt provider,” the company said in a statement to the Australian Securities Exchange on Friday.
The Becton loans are held by the local subsidiary of Lloyds Banking Group, known as BOSI.
The debt parcel being sold includes secured debt, and a separate tranche relating to the Divercity property development in Sydney’s Waterloo.
The AFR speculated the corporate debt was likely to be sold at a substantial discount to its face value.
The sale of the debt may also trigger further restructuring at Becton, including possible privatisation.
“We embrace the change because it means the company can have a robust discussion about the future,” Mariner boss Darren Olney-Fraser told the AFR.
He has previously called BOSI as a intransigent debt holder.
Following the global financial crisis, Lloyds has been reducing its non-core exposures in Australasia in the past few years.
