Australian alternative investment manager ROC Partners has put in a counterbid for VitalHarvest, Australia’s largest agricultural trust, offering to buy the trust for A$314.8m (€202m).
Listed Vitalharvest is currently weighing up an offer from Macquarie Infrastructure and Real Assets (MIRA), which, in November 2020 submitted a A$300m proposal to acquire the trust.
Vitalharvest’s board said that other than price, ROC’s offer would be on substantially the same terms as the proposal from the Macquarie Agriculture Fund (MAFM) – Crop Australia 2 fund.
The board noted that there was no certainty as to whether the non-binding ROC proposal would result in a binding offer, or “what the terms of any binding offer may be”.
The board was assessing the ROC proposal further and would provide a further announcement to the market once it had done so, said VItalharvest.
ROC said that its proposal represented a “highly compelling” proposition and superior value to Vitalharvest unitholders compared with the MAFM offer, and that, at A$1.08 per unit, its offer carried an 8% premium over the rival bid.
ROC currently manages more than A$7.1bn in assets on behalf of its investors, including the A$140bn Aware Super.
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