Investors force showdown with KIP

Kiwi, which holds its annual meeting in Porirua today, has annoyed a group of institutional investors over plans for a 62,000-square-metre retail development at Auckland's Sylvia Park. The investors are also concerned 1960's Unit Trusts Act, which Kiwi operates under, requires a lower level of corporate governance than 1993's Companies Act. A group of investors including Brook Asset Management, BT Funds Management, Tower, ING, and Walker Capital Management, have requested an extraordinary general meeting through Kiwi's trustee, New Zealand Permanent Trustees.

BusinessDay understands one has been granted in November and will be chaired by an independent party rather than Kiwi's manager, Kiwi Income Properties.

Combined, the institutional investors hold more than the 10 per cent of Kiwi's units by value needed to seek an EGM. "It's all part of a movement to ensure more light is shed (and) more focus on governance takes place," said BT Funds Management's Paul Richardson.

ING's Shane Solly said his firm supported anything that improved corporate governance and the way minority investors and unit holders were treated.

Brook's Simon Botherway said Kiwi had refused to include Brook motions in the annual meeting. He considered this an "oppressive" move.

Unit holders do not have the right to put resolutions to a meeting convened at the manager's instigation. It was believed few, if any, of the institutional investors were to attend today's meeting, leaving their concerns to be raised at the extraordinary meeting. Some investors want to bring Kiwi's trust deed in line with the Companies Act, requiring it to hold an annual meeting and forcing it to consider motions advanced by unit holders. One investor said it would not be credible for Kiwi to change the trust deed itself.

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