Tag Archives: QFPOL.MI

Elliott Associates increases bids for QFAL and QFID

Elliott Associates launched bids for four different Italian REIFs two months ago, and so far they haven’t been very successful in acquiring shares. They managed to acquire 16% of the shares of the Polis fund, but another hedge fund overbid them on the Mediolanum Real Estate Fund and apparently there was little interest from Fondo Alpha and Immobiliare Dinamico shareholders to tender their shares. As a result Elliott Associates decided to increase their bid for those two funds. They raised the offer for Fondo Alpha by 12.4% from €1156.25 to €1300.00 and the offer for Immobiliare Dinamico was increased by 12.5% from €69.31 to €78.00. I didn’t tender my shares in the previous offers, and I don’t intent to tender them in the new offers, but I do find it very encouraging to see the large interest from hedge funds in Italian REIFs. I bought them last year and no-one was interested, and now everybody tries to get a piece of the action:

Overview tender offers for iREIFs

Disclosure

Author is long Fondo Alpha and Immobiliare Dinamico

Elliott Associates launches bid for four Italian REIFs

Elliott Associates, one of the worlds most successful hedge funds, has launched a bid to acquire the share capital of four Italian REIFs. Last year I spend some time analyzing this sector, and decided to buy a basket of seven different funds. I found these attractive because the funds all trade at large discounts to NAV (often >50%) while they are all liquidating and returning capital to shareholders to coming years. It’s good to see that a big and successful hedge fund is apparently seeing the same value, and has launched a bid for four funds.

Elliott Associates is offering roughly a 25% premium compared to the undisturbed market price, and the big question is of course should I be happy with this and tender my shares or should I keep my position? Elliott Associates is obviously expecting to generate “adequate” returns even at a 25% premium, and I’m pretty sure that what they consider adequate is also good enough for me. On the other hand I also could just take the money now, and try to reinvest it in one of the many other attractive looking Italian REIFs.

A third angle to consider is whether or not a position is warranted just to play the merger arbitrage game. The current spread between the market price and the offer is roughly 6% which is pretty nice. The biggest issue is that Elliott Associates will only accepted tendered shares if they are able to acquire more than 50% of the outstanding share capital, and I have no idea how to handicap the odds of that happening. I can imagine that many shareholders, like myself, aren’t exactly jumping at the opportunity to sell those funds at a 40 or 50% discount to NAV.
Overview Elliott offer Italian REIFs

What do you think the wisest course of action is here? I think I’m currently leaning towards keeping my positions, and just letting things play out till the funds liquidate.

Disclosure

Author is long QFAL.MI, QFID.MI and various other iREIFs.