The Lemon Fool

Morning all

I was listening to the Investors Chronicle podcast on the way home last night and heard Phil Oakley talking about British Land and its potential prospects.

I wasn't aware that the Norwegian Sovereign Wealth (NSW) fund had such a high shareholding in BLND (I think they said about 25%) - the podcast explained that having such a relatively cheap, high yielding investment such as BLND could be very useful for NSW.

The loan to value is relatively low at about 30% and NAV is discounted by 34% owing to retail exposure.

There was a suggestion that because of the above characteristics, BLND could be a serious contender for being bought out by NSW once the Brexit and election uncertainty were over.

I hold in my SIPP.

Cheers, OLTB.

That doesn't sound right to me. Looking at the shareholders list Norges Bank Investment Management (who manage the NSWF) own just over 5% of the company, the largest shareholder, but well short of 25% and unlikely to be in a position to launch a takeover, in my opinion.

dealtn wrote:That doesn't sound right to me. Looking at the shareholders list Norges Bank Investment Management (who manage the NSWF) own just over 5% of the company, the largest shareholder, but well short of 25% and unlikely to be in a position to launch a takeover, in my opinion.

That's me mis-hearing the podcast whilst driving then

Apologies, OLTB.

OLTB wrote:There was a suggestion that because of the above characteristics, BLND could be a serious contender for being bought out by NSW once the Brexit and election uncertainty were over.

I'm not an expert but somehow I doubt that. IIRC, NSW don't seek seats on boards as a policy (to avoid charges of political interference?). I imagine they'll stick to a rentier model rather than Berkshire Hathaway-style acquisition.

torata

Norges investment management (who manage the fund) basically operate it as a huge tracker fund with some tilts (ESG and no Oils). You can’t infer anything from the size of a given holding as they’ll hold the same % in other similar companies. They certainly won’t be taking any of their public equity holdings private often, if ever.