|
BAW
BAW
Barloworld Sells Us Leasing Book For R564 Million In R5 Billion Asset Review
Barloworld Limited
(Incorporated in the Republic of South Africa)
(Registration number 1918/000095/06)
(Share code: BAW)
(ISIN: ZAE000026639)
("Barloworld or the Company")
BARLOWORLD SELLS US LEASING BOOK FOR R564 MILLION IN R5 BILLION ASSET REVIEW
Industrial brand management company Barloworld Limited has concluded an
agreement to sell the materials handling equipment lease and loan portfolio held
by its industrial distribution division in the United States at book value for
R564 million to Hyster Capital, a joint venture between General Electric Capital
Corporation and Nacco Materials Handling Group, Inc. (NACCO).
NACCO, based in Portland, Oregon manufactures the Hyster brand of lift trucks.
Barloworld has been a Hyster dealer since 1929 and has a network of territories
which includes eight states in the south-east US, the United Kingdom, Belgium,
Holland and the whole of southern Africa. This network makes Barloworld the
largest independent lift truck dealer in the world.
Announcing the sale of the US book today, Barloworld chief executive officer
Tony Phillips said: "This is another move in our ongoing work to optimise our
business and ensure that we unlock value where capital is tied up in
unproductive assets. There are a number of other projects currently underway in
this regard including the disposal of our steel tube division and a number of
other disposals which we will announce in due course. Altogether we have almost
R1.5 billion of net assets under the microscope. This number grows to
approximately R5 billion if the associated leasing assets are stated at their
gross value, before deducting interest bearing debt."
"Hyster Capital satisfied our prime consideration to provide a seamless service
between us and our customers to continue what we considered to be a value added
function" said Phillips. "We are negotiating with a partner in the UK to dispose
of our UK book to achieve the same objectives. At R1.6 billion it is
considerably bigger than the US book. We expect this deal be concluded by the
end of this calendar year."
The leasing assets relating to the company"s long term contracts to provide
materials handling solutions to the United Kingdom"s Ministry of Defence (MOD)
will be retained. Barloworld manages over 6000 pieces of materials handing
equipment on long term contracts for the MOD"s Defence Logistics Organisation.
The equipment includes forklift trucks, tractors, trailers and cranes at more
than 600 establishments worldwide.
Phillips added that the leasing books being sold did not generate sufficient
returns and the stand alone financing business was not a strategic or core
component of the industrial distribution division. "There are other people who
are much better at running leasing books than we are and our approach for some
time has been to partner with them rather than using our own balance sheet in
this arena," he concluded.
In 2003 Barloworld sold its R900 million third party South African motor vehicle
finance book to Wesbank, a division of FirstRand Bank Limited, followed by the
sale of its R1.3 billion South African equipment finance book in 2004 to the
same company.
05 September 2006
Sponsor: J.P.Morgan Equities Limited
Date: 05/09/2006 08:26:05 AM Produced by the JSE SENS Department
| Profile Group (Pty) Ltd. has taken care in preparing all information on this website, but does not accept any liability for errors or out-of-date information. | |||||||||||||
| Other Profile Group sites: FundsData Online (unit trust data) | Profile Group corporate site | |||||||||||||
| [ Terms of Use | Privacy Policy | PAIA manual | FAQs/Help | Site Map | © Copyright Reserved 2026 ] | |||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||
