Centro Shares Slump After Buyer Pulls Out of U.S. Asset Sale

By Robert Fenner

Sept. 15 (Bloomberg) -- Centro Properties Group, the shopping mall owner facing a Sept. 30 deadline to repay some of its debt, slumped to a record low after a planned U.S. asset sale fell through.

Centro shares fell 18 percent to 8.6 Australian cents at 10:13 a.m. in Sydney. A private real estate investment adviser decided against buying a 46.65 percent stake in the Centro America Fund for $714 million after examining the unit's books, Melbourne-based Centro Properties said today in a statement.

Chief Executive Officer Glenn Rufrano, 58, is trying to sell assets and raise cash. The collapse of the sale comes two weeks after Centro failed to find a buyer for its Bankstown mall in Sydney's western suburbs.

The planned U.S. deal, at a 10 percent discount to book value, was a first step toward Centro repaying debt it was unable to refinance when the seizure in global credit markets shut its funding avenues.

Centro Properties, which owns and manages more than A$24 billion of shopping malls in the U.S., Australia and New Zealand, has plunged more than 98 percent since Dec. 17 when the company said it was struggling to repay debt. That's slashed its market value to less than A$75 million ($62 million), from a peak of A$8.5 billion in May 2007.

Mitchell Brown, a spokesman for Centro, wasn't immediately available to comment.

To contact the reporter on this story: Robert Fenner in Melbourne rfenner@bloomberg.net