KENNER, LA-With its Series B shareholders backing the sale, Sizeler Property Investors Inc. is scheduled to close Friday on the controversial $324-million hand-off to a pair of Canadian REITs. In turn, the rival bidder has closed the book on the portfolio pursuit.
"We're out of it. The party's all over," Michael Comparato, president of Boca Raton, FL-based Compson Holding Corp., tells GlobeSt.com. The Florida firm was chasing the locally based Sizeler's real estate while the affirmed buyer, Toronto-based Revenue Properties Co. Ltd. and its majority owner Morguard Corp., has been planning a lock, stock and barrel company buyout. Sizeler owns an estimated 3.4 million sf of retail space and nearly three million sf of multifamily properties in Louisiana, Florida and Alabama.
A class-action lawsuit could hamper the plan, but it doesn't appear likely that one will materialize. "Unless one of the big shareholders steps up, we're not going to bother," says Christine Simpson, chief investment officer for the Moraga, CA-based MacKenzie Patterson Fuller LP, which owns 93,450 shares. Not only was the company actively opposing the merger, but at one point was trying to assemble a counter-offer.
One of Sizeler's larger shareholders, Phillip Goldstein, the Pleasantville, NY-based principal for Bulldog Investors, says "the vote's the vote. What can you do? You can't win them all." Goldstein, whose firm controls 1.4 million shares, had been a wild card vote throughout the controversial merger courtship.
There were reports of shareholder lawsuits over the offer from Revenue Properties and Morguard, led by K. Raj Sahi. If filed, the litigation responsibility would pass to the new owners under the take-over terms for the all-cash transaction. The merger was cleared by shareholders of Sizeler's 9.75% Series B preferred stock. In mid-September, there were 246,540 Series B shares in stockholders' hands and 21.46 million shares of outstanding common stock. Sizeler ended yesterday's trading at $15.22 per share on the NYSE, with buys totaling 334,000 shares ringing up a gain of 0.05%.
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