Motor Finance Wizard sale progresses
PR Finance Group is pressing on with efforts to sell its main business, Motor Finance Wizard, to Marubeni, a Japanese trading conglomerate whose main interests in Australia are in mining. The booklet for a second special meeting of PRFG, to approve the sale of the whole company to Keybridge Capital, discloses that PRFG and Marubeni "have entered into a sale agreement." The agreement affects A$65 million in receivables for Motor Finance Wizard. Marubeni will also buy Affordable Car Centres, which is composed of three dealers in second-hand cars in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne.The agreement will become effective once Keybridge completes the takeover of PR Finance Group (a step taken to protect the former's interest in a mezzanine loan to the latter).A stumbling block remains the lack of consent from Commonwealth Bank for the proposed sale.PRFG said last week that CBA had reiterated that it had not consented to the sale to Marubeni, and that the sale agreement "constitutes a further default".Marubeni's two-year-old equipment financing business in Australia funds the Hitachi, John Deere and Bell brands of mining and construction machinery.However, Craig Gee, general manager of that subsidiary wrote in an email that "our business unit has nothing to do with that [the Motor Finance Wizard purchase], nor do we know anything about it."