St Laurence investors to get 9c payment next month: receiver

St Laurence investors to get 9c payment next month: receiver

By Paul McBeth

Dec. 21 (BusinessDesk) – Investors in failed financier St Laurence Ltd. will get the first 9 cents-in-the-dollar repayment next month after receivers sold its interest in National Property Trust and recovered some loans.

Still, receivers Barry Jordan and David Vance of Deloitte kept their forecast recovery at between 15% and 22% of investors’ principal according to their second report as at Oct. 28 and published on the firm’s website. That’s on top of the 10 cents repaid under St Laurence’s abandoned moratorium.

They don’t expect to recover enough to make any interest payments, or repay note holders and unsecured creditors.

Jordan and Vance said they recovered $18.8 million from the sale of the National Property Trust units, the bulk of which will come through by the end of March. The receivers are looking at “many options” to either sell shares or the management contract for Irongate Property Ltd., but none have been finalised.

Earlier this month Irongate trustee Perpetual Trust declined to grant a waiver for two breaches of the property manager’s trust deed. Irongate has until the end of January to strengthen its position after it flagged a May repayment of $50 million worth of bonds as uncertain.

Jordan and Vance squeezed $2.6 million from outstanding loans between April 29 and Oct. 28, and have had a “mixture of success realising” the book. St Laurence’s biggest loan, which involves a glass/metal recycling plant in New South Wales needs work with local environmental agencies along with the borrower and potential buyer before it can be finalised, they said.

St Laurence was sent to the receivers owing about 9,400 investors some $212 million plus interest after then-chief executive Kevin Podmore went against the trustee’s wishes by making an offer to debenture holders to swap their debt for equity in a new company that would hold the remaining assets.

(BusinessDesk)

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