Leanne Catelan’s Excelsior Capital folds to shareholder pressure ahead of court battle

Excelsior Capital chair Leanne Catelan is the daughter of the late property data mogul and RP Data founder Ray Catelan.

An old-school corporate raider gets a win over a cashbox in an old-fashioned corporate raid. Are we back in the 1990s?

That seems to be the case over at Excelsior Capital, which has folded to a push by Peter Murray’s London City Equities (LCE) to wind up its affairs and return its estimated $120m in capital to shareholders.

The big question is why?

Excelsior has been sitting on a big pile since selling its electrical cabling business in early 2024, for around $100m.

Since then it has been the target of Murray’s LCE and Imperial Pacific, and more lately of Brisbane lawyer Warwick Sauer, who wanted the cash returned to shareholders.

Problem was that Excelsior director and majority owner Leanne Catelan was in an unassailable position. Catelan is the daughter of the late property data mogul and RP Data founder, Ray Catelan, so she probably doesn’t need the extra cash; for a start she sold her Potts Point mansion “Bomera” in Sydney to besieged British metals tycoon Sanjeev Gupta for $34m a few years ago.

Axiom Mining chief executive Ryan Mount in the Solomon Islands in 2019.

She also held 51.3 per cent of Excelsior’s stock, so she couldn’t be budged from her position on the board by pesky minority shareholders, and nor could her hand-picked fellow directors.

Witness Tuesday’s action at Excelsior’s annual shareholder meeting.

Minority holders booked a 30 per cent protest vote against the re-election of former Axiom Mining boss Ryan Mount, in which Catelan could vote her shares.

And then tossed the remuneration report for the second year running and won a spill motion – Catelan could vote in neither motion.

But then failed to elect a new suite of directors and ditch the old ones (Catelan’s votes counted in those ones too). A motion to wind the company up was also lost, by the same 70 to 30 per cent margin.

Unassailable, like we said.

And yet …

Leanne Catelan sold Sydney mansion Bomera to Sanjeev Gupta.

Just ahead of the meeting Excelsior folded to Sauer and Murray’s demands, and agreed to sell all of its assets, pay off all of its debts, and hand back the remaining cash to shareholders.

A clue to the reasons might be found in the Federal Court, where Murray has been pushing a case that Catelan has been oppressing minority shareholders by using the cash from the cabling business sale to turn Excelsior into a listed investment company, rather than handing it back.

That case isn’t due to be heard until February, but this week Federal Court Justice Angus Stewart did order the handover of a large pile of Excelsior documents to Murray and his associates, as part of the discovery process.

Board minutes, records of investment decisions, tax advice – that sort of thing. Only Excelsior knows whether there would be anything in the trove that might help Murray and company in their suit.

And nobody ever will, now, after Excelsior caved in and announced its imminent demise as a listed company, along with the settlement of Murray’s suit.

But, even though the news sent shares in the company up 30 per cent on Tuesday to a close of $4.28 – miles above its last net tangible asset backing of $3.81 – it’s still not really clear how much shareholders will wind up getting.

Excelsior says it will run a meeting to approve an asset liquidation, which will, presumably need Catelan to vote her shares in favour to succeed. And the wind-up should be done by April, Excelsior says.

But will it?

About $54.3m of Excelsior’s cash is scattered across a suite of “alternative” unlisted management funds – private credit funds like Merrick Capital, a couple of litigation funds, a “digital asset management fund”, stuff like that.

Who knows how many will be allowing redemptions before April, or whether Excelsior will be able to find a buyer for the holdings, if not?

On paper it’s a big win for minority shareholders, but there’s still a fair bit of the race to run.