by Jenny Ruth
Celsius, which was promoted by Macquarie Equities, listed on NZX in February 2008 and was designed to invest in global shares with the aim of returning 9% per annum after tax to investors - it qualified under the Portfolio Investment Entity (PIE) regime.
Investors received dividends of 8.54 cents per unit in the year ended March 2009 and 4.61 cents in the year ended March 2010.
Trustee Perpetual Trust told NZX the fund had been scheduled to terminate on March 12, 2013 but is now expected to be wound up on October 22 this year.
Perpetual says it and Barclays "believe that international dividend rates are unlikely to recover sufficiently during the remaining life of the fund to meet the fund's objective" and Celsius units have been trading at a significant discount to net asset value which was just below 70 cents on September 20. Celsius units last traded at 58 cents on September 7 compared with their $1 float price.
Perpetual's head of investments and marketing Charlie Goodwin says the strength of the New Zealand dollar is also reflected in Celsius' poor performance.
Perpetual has now suspended redemption requests and expects to pay investors their proportional share of Celsius' net assets after deducting fees, charges and tax.
Asked whether the refunds will approximate net asset value, Goodwin says they should be "because Barclays have given an undertaking that people won't be penalised due to the scale of the fund."
Celsius currently has 4.88 million units on issue.
"We have to do a final audit so there will be some extra costs," Goodwin says. "We obviously want to look after investors. No one wants to get a bad name out of this."
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