Macquarie Atlas Roads to become Atlas Arteria after split

Macquarie Atlas Roads will be renamed Atlas Arteria once it has separated its management from the Macquarie Group.

Macquarie Atlas Roads will be renamed Atlas Arteria once it has separated its management from the Macquarie Group.

The toll-road operator, which demerged from Macquarie Infrastructure Group in 2010, has fleshed out its previously announced management plans and is searching for a new chief executive after James Hooke opted to stay with Macquarie Group.

Mr Hooke has led the US-listed Macquarie Infrastructure Corporation and succeeded Peter Trent as Macquarie Atlas chief executive in February.

Macquarie Atlas is the last existing listed fund that the bank runs in Australia, after Sydney Airports and Ardent Leisure (formerly Macquarie Leisure) were internalised.

These days, infrastructure investors choose to own assets under a private equity model.

The Australian revealed in ­October that Macquarie Atlas shareholders had met with Macquarie executives to push for an internalisation of the fund.

Macquarie Atlas executives are paid by Macquarie Group in exchange for management fees, the size of which had prompted some shareholders to push for the split.

Macquarie Group will remain manager for 12 months after Macquarie Atlas’s May 15 annual meeting on its existing terms of a fee worth 0.85 per cent of the toll-road operator’s market value. It will then provide “transition services” for about another six months for a fee of $750,000 a month.

Macquarie Atlas board chairs Nora Scheinkestel and Jeff Conyers said Macquarie had co-operated fully with the split.

“(We) believe that this outcome is beneficial and in the best interests of Macquarie Atlas security holders,” they said.

“We look forward to continuing this co-operative spirit as we work towards a smooth tran­sition.”

An independent Macquarie Atals board committee commissioned Grant Samuel to prepare an independent expert’s report with respect to the internalisation.

“Grant Samuel concluded the proposal is “fair and reasonable to, and in the best interests of, securityholders”, Macquarie Atlas said.

Within the Macquarie Atlas portfolio are a 20.1 per cent stake in the eastern France toll road APRR, a 19.74 per cent interest in French road ADELAC, a 50 per cent stake in the Dulles Greenway in the US and a 70 per cent interest in the Warnow Tunnel in Germany.

Base fees to manage the fund are about $32 million a year, then 0.85 per cent of its market value. Shareholders will be asked to vote on the proposal in May.

Shares in Macquarie Atlas closed up 4.6 per cent at $5.91.

AAP, agencies