Pillar holders are in the money

SHAREHOLDERS in Pillar Property are to receive £1 a share later this summer, with the prospect of a further £1 next summer. This year's payment will cost Pillar £143m as the group changes direction to concentrate on long-term earnings growth that will require less capital.

The group's Fosse Park shopping centre in Leicester, which has 5m square feet of retail space, is fully tenanted, as is Britain's biggest retail park at Fort Kinnaird, near Edinburgh. Its retail and leisure development in Fulham will be completed by the autumn and is already 81% let.

Pillar has been selling properties and investing the proceeds in unit trusts and funds. It plans to focus on the marketing of units in the trusts it has helped create in the past year to 'enhance liquidity'. At the same time it will reduce its holding in the Hercules Trust from the current 48% and in the Clout Trust, where it holds 36% of the units.

The strategy change has incurred one-off costs, and the group had a pre-tax loss of £11.7m in the year to March against a £24.2m profit a year earlier. As well as the £1 payment, there is an unchanged total dividend of 7.3p. The shares added 4 1/2p to 440p, only 1 1/2p short of a five-year high.