The business of a fund manager is to build the treasure chest and collect fees for keeping it safe. The bigger it gets, the more you earn.
And that's just what David Harrison's Charter Hall continues to do. In a quiet, off-market deal late last year, Charter Hall scooped up around half of a $420 million portfolio of 15 Bunnings stores.
The retail portfolio will be held by an unlisted fund, one of many vehicles and mandates which make up the ownership of the $18 billion or so in funds that Harrison and his team look after.
The Bunnings portfolio is well-known to many in the investment community, as much for the unique form that its owner Wesfarmers adopted when it spun out the portfolio three years ago, backed by a sophisticated capital structure.
That special vehicle, created through a sale and leaseback, was the object of fascination for many in the capital markets. Among them former Macquarie power bankers Allan Moss, Michael Carapiet and John Prendiville who bought into Wesfarmers' unconventional $300 million capital raising.
Alongside Wesfarmers itself, the power trio took up $17 million of the so-called "residual equity" notes that backed $270 million of debt linked to lease payments, which altogether formed the funding stack for Bunnings portfolio.
Three years on, the ex-Macquarie stars, all high-net worth investors in their own right now, have sold over their stake as part of the Charter Hall deal.
Elsewhere in the property sector, eyebrows were raised this week when Brisbane-based Cromwell, led by Paul Weightman, issued its latest encyclical in the stand-off over Investa Office Fund. It was less of a standard ASX release, and more, well, screed.
As the war of words escalates, Weightman's Cromwell is getting tetchy about what it reckons is a deliberate frustration, on the part of Investa, of its own efforts to form a proper privatisation proposal for the $2.8 billion property trust.
Investa has turned up its nose at Weightman's highly conditional offer, noting the low-ball bid lacks satisfactory evidence it will be sufficiently funded.
This week it was Weightman's turn to get snippy, bemoaning the lack of access to the inside information he needs to revise his offer.
The Investa insiders are unmoved by that display of chagrin. 'Show us the money' remains their motto. And, observers say, it is not an unreasonable position. They note that Cromwell's principal backer, South Africa's Redefine, is highly leveraged.
Cromwell itself, they say, is not exactly flush with funds, distributing close to 100 per cent of its earnings. And those earnings will come under pressure as Cromwell looks to fill big expiries coming up in its Brisbane and Canberra assets.
