Proprium Capital Partners has made a AUD280m (€175m) takeover offer for Australian residential developer Villa World.
Through its Australian offshoot, AVID Property Group, the US investor is offering to pay AUD2.23 for each Villa World shares.
AVID said Villa World’s exposure to greenfield growth corridors on Australia’s east coast fitted well with AVID’s strategic ambitions to expand its existing platform.
It said it views its own A$3bn platform of Australian housing projects as “highly complementary” to Villa World’s business.
An industry source told IPE Real Assets that Villa World was a “straight-forward house-and-land developer”, focussed on the growing southeastern corner of Queensland.
“Given better affordability – and it has not gone through a boom – the Queensland housing market is better-placed than those in NSW or Victoria to perform better in the next five years,” said the source.
Villa World said AVID was proposing to acquire all of its shares by way of a scheme of arrangement. Its offer was an “indicative, conditional, incomplete and non-binding expression of interest”.
“There is no guarantee that, following board consideration of the indicative proposal, AVID will be granted due diligence – or that the indicative proposal will result in a transaction, or that the board will recommend any proposal,” it said.
Proprium, which was spun out of Morgan Stanley in 2013, entered Australia in 2015 through the acquisition of the-then Investa residential land business, since renamed AVID.
Signalling its intention to grow in Australia, Proprium brought an Australian partner, in Anton Capital, into the business in 2017
