PIH to divest Brand Smart property stake

Firm tidies up balance sheet

By Kate Kachor
Wed 30 Jun 2010

In a bid to tidy up its balance sheet, PIH intends to sell its interest in the Brand Smart property group.

Professional Investment Holdings (PIH) plans to divest its interest in the Brand Smart property group as part of its preparation to merge with listed group Centrepoint Alliance.

The parent company of dealer group Professional Investment Services has begun discussions with a number of interested parties to sell its stake in the property, according to the firm's managing director Grahame Evans.

"Whilst we're going to do this transaction [with Centrepoint] and complete it in the next couple of months ... it will give us the opportunity to do some work around making sure the company is in the best possible situation," Evans said.

"It also gives us the opportunity to divest ourselves of the Brand Smart property and we've got a lot of interest about that at the moment and that process has started. So again it enables us to get that off our books because we're not a property company.

"We're an advice company and it's just a big asset on our balance sheet that shouldn't be there."

In a letter to shareholders dated December 2009, PIH's cash flow and cash balances were reduced following compensation payments, believed to be around $20 million, to clients who had invested in the Brand Smart Riverbank Property Syndicate, a failed Sydney shopping centre development.

Evans said the firm plans to divest the Brand Smart property over the next six months.

Meanwhile, PIH's plan to purchase shares in its funds management subsidiary, Ventura Investment Management, has been shelved until the Centrepoint agreement has closed.

In April this year, PIH informed the market it had withdrawn its offer to acquire the shares in Ventura by way of a scheme of arrangement.

PIH approached the shareholders of Ventura in February over a possible deal.

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