Serepisos companies in receivership

UPDATED 4:11pm: The National Business Review understands properties listed for sale by receivers include apartments atop Burger King in Manners Mall, and several apartments at 60 Courtenay Place and 30 Tory Street.

The prime asset to be sold is the 11-story Ivivi Building, formerly known as Century City Tower. Tenants contacted on Tuesday by the National Business Review were unaware of developments.

The two companies owe Equitable Mortgages nearly $13 million. The amount owed to other secured and unsecured creditors is unknown.

Terry Serepisos did not return NBR calls.

UPDATED 2:29pm: Receiver John Fisk of PricewaterhouseCoopers said he was appointed last Thursday as receiver of two Terry Serepisos companies under Equitable Mortgages' general security agreement over both 79 Manners St and Maison Property Holdings.

Mr Fisk said a number of properties owned by the companies were subject to first-ranking security by Equitable: "So we’ll be looking to sell those to repay Equitable’s debt."

He said the receivership was likely to be messy due to the large number of secured creditors: "Each of those companies actually has other first-ranking secured creditors in there as well, so it’s a little more complicated."

Frozen lender Equitable Mortgages have appointed receivers to 79 Manners Street and Maison Property Holdings, two companies owned by embattled Wellington developer Terry Serepisos.

John Fisk and Richard Longman of PricewaterhouseCoopers were appointed receivers on May 19.

According to land records the companies own a number of Wellington apartments on Tory St and Courtenay Place, as well as the Century City Tower at 175 Victoria Street.

175 Victoria St is a 4110 square metre office building with a rateable value of $6 million. Equitable hold first mortgage over the property, with South Canterbury second-ranked.

According to the Companies Office, 79 Manners St has secured creditors including Equitable, South Canterbury, ASB and ANZ.

ASB Bank’s security includes assignment of leases, while South Canterbury has a cross-guarantee across Mr Serepisos’ other companies Century City Holdings and Century City Ventures.

A spokeswoman for South Canterbury would not comment on whether the cross guarantee would be enforced as the status of individuals loans was confidential.

Maison Property Holdings has two secured creditors: First Mortgage Trust and Equitable.

Equitable Mortgages called in the receivers last November.

The government-guaranteed company, owned by the wealthy Spencer family, owed 6000 depositors approximately $192 million.

Equitable has been given credit for pulling the pin relatively early after realising it probably wouldn’t make it, thus giving the receivers more chance of recovering money for the Crown.

The company blamed asset deterioration, a lack of new loan business and a bleak outlook for debenture funding for its demise.

In their first report Grant Graham and Brendon Gibson of KordaMentha said Equitable had loans of $188.4 million to be recovered.