Financial 15 Split Corp. has announced:
that a special meeting of the holders of the Company’s Preferred Shares and Class A Shares will be held at 10:00 a.m. (Eastern standard time) on Wednesday, July 23, 2008. The purpose of the meeting is to consider a special resolution to extend the mandatory termination date for the Company from December 1, 2008 to December 1, 2015. Shareholders of record at the close of business on June 16, 2008 will be provided with the notice of meeting and management information circular in respect of the meeting and will be entitled to vote at the meeting.
If the extension is approved, Class A Shareholders and Preferred Shareholders will be provided with a Special Retraction right which is designed to provide Shareholders with an opportunity to retract their Shares and receive a retraction price that is calculated in the same way that such price would be calculated if the Company were to terminate on December 1, 2008 as originally contemplated.
A term extension would be a good thing for the preferred shareholders; there is good asset coverage with this issue and a coupon of 5.25%. Unfortunately, the capital units are now valued below their issue price, implying that tax consequences to the capital unit-holders for a termination won’t be all that terrible. The ABK.PR.C exchange/extension was a much easier call for those capital unitholders, given the enormous unrealized capital gains they had.
FTN.PR.A is incorporated in the HIMIPref™ SplitShare Index. There are currently 10,174,941 shares outstanding, according to the TSX, with a par value of $10.00 – so it’s a nice size and would be good to keep on the board.
Update: Assiduous Reader cowboylutrell reminds me in the comments that this is a second attempt to extend term. The prior attempt was denied in April 2007 while term extensions for FFN.PR.A and DFN.PR.A were approved.
Update: See also previous commentary for FTN.PR.A
This is the second time Quadravest is going ahead with an proposition to extend the mandatory redemption date for FTN and FTN.PR.A.
The first time was about a year ago: on that occasion, they succeeded for FFN – FFN.PR.A and DFN – DFN.PR.A, but failed with FTN – FTN.PR.A. At that time, they were trying to extend it to December 1, 2014.
[…] The Term Extension has been previously discussed on PrefBlog. […]