Dunloe House, the property company controlled by Dublin solicitor, Mr Noel Smyth, is planning to raise around £25 million in a placing of new shares on open offer to existing shareholders.
Dunloe will also pay more than £20 million for three property companies: Aviette, owned by Mr Smyth and his family interests; Monarch Group, controlled by Mr Phil Monahan and Mr Dominick Glennane; and Cherrywood Properties, jointly owned by Aviette and Monarch, according to informed industry sources.
An announcement is imminent, the sources said. The proposed transactions will have to be approved by the non-Smyth shareholders.
The shares have been suspended at 35p since last June, valuing the company at £28 million, pending an announcement of the deal. The placing price is likely to be well below the last quoted price, as this price was a premium to the net asset value per share. The deal is, in effect, a reverse takeover, as the value of the combined acquisitions are much larger than Dunloe. The exact impact on Dunloe will not be known until details of the deal are announced. Aviette owns a number of investment and development properties. These include the Westside Shopping Centre in Galway, units at Nutgrove Avenue and Tallaght, in Dublin, and investment properties in Cork.
Monarch owns the Bloomfields Shopping Centre in Dun Laoghaire and sites in Drogheda and Dundalk. Cherrywood has 400 acres of development land at Loughlinstown, Co Dublin. Mr Monahan has been interested in seeking a public quotation for his property interests for some time. In 1992 he spoke to Dunloe when the company was 77 per cent owned by British company, Clayform. And Monarch had an unsuccessful flirtation with Ewert, the publicly quoted Belfast property company. Mr Smyth and his wife Anne Marie have a 40.7 per cent stake in Dunloe, valued at £11.4 million. He gained control when he purchased the stake of Mr Ben Dunne in 1993.
Dunloe has been transformed in the last few years. Its property portfolio is valued at around £30 million, when the recently acquired Mill Centre in Clondalkin is included. A revaluation would increase this valuation.
