Knight Frank’s private equity arm has received a takeover offer for Rutley European Property.

The listed fund, managed by Rutley Capital Partners, saw its share price soar 60% this morning to 4.6p after it said it had received ‘approaches from third parties which may or may not lead to an offer being made for the entire issued share capital of the company’.

It said that it had been given ‘protective notice under the terms of the management agreement’, and warned shareholders that there was no certainty that an offer would be forthcoming.

The fund said in January that it was in breach of loan-to-value covenants on eight of its 11 special purpose vehicles, and its average ratio was 79% against a covenant of 76%.

Since then values have fallen further, and last month the fund made a tender offer to buy 10% of its own shares in order to improve its liquidity and to reduce the gap between its share price and net asset value.

The company said that a further announcement would be made ‘in due course’.

Topics