Now boasting over £100m of cash on deposit, Conygar joins a growing band of opportunists hoping to acquire assets or strike joint ventures with UK banks, who face a restructuring marathon on tens of billions of outstanding property loans.
Conygar and its contemporaries, including , , and have a track record in turning around underperforming property portfolios and crucially have cash to inject into transactions.
"Property values have halved in the last three years," says Mr Ware. "The institutions, pension funds, banks and their clients are short of cash and if they don't get that cash in the next year, values may well halve again."
In his own words, the vital ingredient is "boring old asset management". "We can use our cash to add value to property that the owners can't add themselves," he explains. "This might be through refurbishment, basic maintenance, restructuring leases, or winning tenant renewals." The board has already looked at £500m-worth of property, and is conducting due diligence on two separate deals.
The back to basics approach is also planned for TAP's £180m-worth of UK property assets. Conygar's £28.8m bid for the company has now received acceptances from 94 per cent of TAP's shareholders, and it is set to take control of the board next week. The company will continue to be domiciled in Guernsey, but will be de-listed and held as a Conygar subsidiary.
"In effect, it's a management change," says Mr Ware. "We offered our discounted shares for their discounted shares, and nearly all of them went for the shares. Our strategy is to sort the company out, reduce debt, get the covenants straight and restructure management fees so shareholders' interests are aligned with everyone else's."
Big institutional holders, including Fidelity, Henderson, Aviva and Legal & General who came on board with TAP, have added to their holdings in this week's fund-raising. It was also well supported by Conygar's biggest shareholders - the activist Laxey Partners, Gartmore, Blackrock and Mr Ware himself.
And Conygar has also acquired a new director this week in the form of Laxey's chairman Preston Rabl. "For the last umpteen years, people have bought anything that moved, geared up, and sold it on," he says. "It is a very different skill to be able to sort out problem assets and move them on, but it's a skill that Robert's got."
