The fight between Magellan and Nick Bolton is getting stuck in the mud

afr.com:

The animosity between Magellan Financial and the investment house’s bete noir, Keybridge Capital’s Nick Bolton, shows no sign of dissipating despite the two parties breaking bread and discussing their stand-off in late August.

Bolton and his fellow investor, ex-Domain boss Antony Catalano, were at the meeting to propose a truce of sorts, sources close to the discussions told Street Talk. Bolton was hoping Magellan would buy the options he held in the Magellan Global Fund, a closed-end strategy that listed in 2017, in exchange for him signing a stand-still agreement, they said.

But it appeared to those present that Bolton and Catalano were proposing a special arrangement for Keybridge, something that those close to the discussion said “reeked of self-interest”.

Others involved in these discussions don’t remember it quite that way. Bolton offered to sell the options back to Magellan at a substantial discount to their balance sheet liability value, they say. That was in June, and no response was provided.

Recently, they said, Magellan asked Bolton to reopen the offer. Whether that has happened remains unclear. Bolton told Street Talk he had “no comment on whether we have met with Magellan”.

While public disclosures reveal Bolton’s Keybridge owned 32 million options last year, sources close to the investor told The Australian Financial Review in July that he had bought a further 100 million.

Just over 1 billion options are outstanding. The options accumulation was part of a plan to raise $60 million and borrow a further $60 million to buy up 5 per cent of the outstanding units required to convene a vote to wind up the trust and return cash to investors. Such an outcome would require the support of 75 per cent of unit