CYRE Trilogy Group has called on financial planners to help stop the sale of a property trust owned by Queensland property group Australian Property Growth Fund (APGF), resulting in an intensified stoush between the two parties.
The management rights of the fund, the PFA Property Trust (PFA), will be sold to Charter Hall Direct Property Management on the agreement of its unitholders.
"We believe that APGF is the only real beneficiary of the current proposal," CYRE Trilogy director Peter Arnold said in a statement.
"So we are appealing to the financial planners with clients in PFA to vote against or abstain from voting on the current proposal so that unitholders can get the opportunity to consider alternative proposals once the register is provided to other parties."
Arnold said APGF was requested to provide a copy of the register of the PFA 12 weeks ago and so "is in blatant breach of the Corporations Act", as the law required the register to be supplied within seven days.
Letters have been sent to financial planners to encourage their registration for clients to receive an alternative proposal and to contact ASIC to force APGF to hand over the register.
According to CYRE Trilogy, under the APGF proposal, the property group was to receive an upfront payment of $5 million and a substantial share, of up to $4.8 million, of all selling and performance fees from the trust going forward.
APGF managing director Geoff McMahon said its board did not believe providing the register to the "property fund predator" was in the best interests of PFA unitholders and it had been dealing with its constant interference.
"CYRE Trilogy has a history of opportunistically attacking unlisted property funds for their own benefit and destroying unitholder value in the process," McMahon said.
"PFA is a financially stable and well-managed fund. We do not see the benefits to PFA unitholders of allowing CYRE Trilogy to become involved in PFA."
PFA unitholders had already provided encouraging positive feedback on the proposal ahead of the unitholders' meeting to vote on the proposal on 25 July, with about 98 per cent of unitholders who had voted to date being in favour of the proposal, he said.
The APGF board maintains its view to change the responsible entity of PFA to Charter Hall Direct Property Management, as it holds a track record of outperformance for its unitholders.
