AFG valued at $130m

Australian Finance Group received an external valuation on the firm late last year of $130 million, documents relating to the issue of bonus shares to select directors and filed with ASIC show.

This is around three times an external valuation on the firm used in connection with a largely unsuccessful share buy back conducted in the second quarter of 2009.

AFG plans to issue 150,000 free shares to Tony Gill, the chairman, and another 850,000 shares to Gill at $1.10 per share. Gill, a former division director at Macquarie Bank, used to run the classic "banking" arm of Macquarie, and set up the Puma business that funded Aussie Home Loans and others in the 1990s.

The firm also plans to issue 68,000 shares to John Atkins, a non-executive director, at $1.10 a share. Atkins was a former managing partner of Freehills' Perth office.

AFG values its shares at a mid-point of $1.42 each under a valuation received in October 2009. Documents prepared for shareholders do not identify the value used by AFG.

The valuation range was $124 million to $138 million.

AFG reported an underlying profit of $15 million in 2009, down from $22.5 million in 2008.

The latest monthly sales indicator from AFG, for April 2010, shows that the firm's affiliated mortgage brokers arranged loans of $2.3 billion over the month, down from $2.7 billion in March 2010 and down by 18 per cent compared with April 2009.