Liberty International has rounded on property analysts who criticised last week’s £159m equity issue.
The company placed 28.4m new shares at 560p, against the previous day’s close at 580p.
“It was a very able bit of financing,” said chairman Donald Gordon. “There are some amazing opportunities out there, and we intend to take them whether Deutsche and JP Morgan like it or they don’t.”
Both investment banks questioned the need for the dilutive placing. Deutsche Bank cut Liberty to “sell” from “hold” and chopped its price target. JP Morgan remained “overweight” but cut a range of forecasts, saying it seemed that the main motivation was to secure entry into the FTSE 100.
Gordon said Liberty, which has a market cap of £1.8bn, had many projects on the boil and liked to maintain reasonable debt/asset ratios.
He dismissed Deutsche’s suggestion that it could have funded its projects through debt or through selling offices.
“We’re building a company, not reducing it,” he said. “We have to have money, and when we have an opportunity on good terms, we’ll do that.
“It’s all very well running up enormous debt, but at the end of the day you want all the reserves you can get,” he added.
He admitted he saw entry into the FTSE 100 as vital, because there were so many institutions that did not invest in non-FTSE companies.
“We’ve been a top 100 company for at least six months, but we’re ignored because the rules keep in companies well below us. We don’t want to play in the second league,” he said.
“I’m used to playing in the larger league. You’re either in the FTSE or basically I would have taken the company private.”
