Harry Triguboff considers retiring with part sale to Chinese interests
Eighty-one year old Harry Triguboff, owner of renowned Meriton Apartments, is potentially looking to sell half of the company to Chinese interests.
The potentially $3 billion opportunity for Triguboff saw him tell the AFR Weekend that he received the offer a couple of years ago from the owner of a property developer who is already prolific overseas – building 200,000 dwellings in China each year. He would not reveal the developer.
Asian interests were identified in Meriton in March last year, however last month, before his visit to Guangzhou, there had already been unsolicited bids reported for Meriton Group. At this stage, he told The Australian that he would likely reject the offers.
Billionaire Harry Triguboff, born in a White Russian Jewish enclave in China, has spent 50 years building Australia’s biggest unit company, Meriton Apartments.
“I am thinking I could sell part of [Meriton],” Triguboff reportedly told the AFR.
“It is very early stages, but I could be prepared to sell the development part of the business and then the family could continue to collect the rent on the units I already own. Maybe I could retire soon and they could run the investment business.”
Meriton is expected to make $300 million of profit from the sales of $1.1 billion worth of apartments, and the company carries very little debt – worth around $6.3 billion.
He also said that he looks to keep the 2,000 units he currently owns in family hands. They are placed across Sydney, the Gold Coast and Brisbane and return $200 million profit each year, worth up to $3.5 billion.
Admirably, he also said that he was not going to sell anything “if they are going to start firing people”.
“Other people think about shareholders, well, I think about my people. I don’t look at it if it is a good or bad deal, I am looking at the evolution of the company. He [the potential buyer] wants apartments that are able to be sold. Of course there are many Chinese buying in Australia at the moment and what we have is a lot of apartments that already have a lot of approvals. That is why they are interested in me.”
Triguboff’s business acumen has been a revered topic of many in the property space.
At 79, he signed up for Twitter.
At 80, Property Observer created a timeline of some of his latest developments. And he also celebrated his 80th with a proposed $100 million inner Sydney site acquisition.
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Picture of Harry Triguboff courtesy of Wikipedia/Creative Commons.
