Before moving to the formal business of the meeting, I would like to provide you with an update on our recent equity capital raising and also our business activities, despite it being very early days for us.
Turning first to the equity raising. This was successfully completed this week. We have been delighted with the reception that the equity offer received. We wish to thank Mariner Financial for their strong support. In addition, we enjoyed support from a wide range of institutional and retail investors under the Foundation and General Offers. All shares allocated under the Offers are now trading on the ASX.
We have been very pleased by the early level of investments, as well as the emerging transaction pipeline, that the Company has been able to source. These investments are spread across our four core asset classes of property, infrastructure, fixed income and leasing. We indicated in the Prospectus for the equity raising that we anticipated that the initial amount of shareholders funds would be fully invested by June 2007. As of today, we have invested approximately two thirds of our shareholders¡¦ funds and we are optimistic of achieving full investment of our equity capital over the next three months. This is an excellent start and provides a strong impetus to the growth prospects of the Company.
We flagged in the Prospectus that the Company will secure a debt facility. We are happy to report that we are in the process of finalising an $80 million bank debt facility which will be available to fund further growth in the Company¡¦s investments portfolio.
Once we have achieved full investment of our shareholders¡¦ funds and debt facility, we will then consider raising further equity to finance the ongoing growth of the Company.
The Company has already developed relationships with a range of transaction originators. We are optimistic these and other relationships will deliver consistent deal flow to the Company over the medium term.
With strong activity on the transaction front, it is important that we have our full management team in place. We are pleased to report that we have secured a high quality group of executives. Apart from Mark and myself, our other senior executives are as follows:
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Karen McGregor has joined us as CFO and Company Secretary. Before joining us, Karen worked with Commonwealth Bank, initially with the Institutional Bank and more recently leading the Bank's Agribusiness, Corporate and Business teams. Prior to Commonwealth, Karen worked in project finance with Leighton Holdings Limited and in corporate finance and capital markets roles with HSBC. |
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Ian Pike will start with us in mid December as our Chief Investment Officer. Ian brings a wealth of experience from a long career, also with Commonwealth Bank. In his role as the Head of Risk for Institutional Banking, he has managed risk through a variety of economic cycles and across the four asset classes that are integral to our investments portfolio. |
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David Stefanoff will join us in early January to bolster our transaction capabilities. David was part of the Record Investments senior management team and was the team leader in the Record/Allco merger in June 2006. |
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Also on the transaction side, Eddie Mytkowski has joined us from Commonwealth Bank where Eddie was a senior member of the Institutional Bank's Structured Finance team. |
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Michelle Kingsbury is our very able Office Manager. |
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