Global Net Lease, Necessity Retail REIT shareholder supports combination

Blackwells Capital, an alternative investment management firm that is a shareholder of both Global Net Lease (GNL) and The Necessity Retail REIT (RTL) reiterated its support for the companies’ proposed combination. Jason Aintabi, chief investment officer of Blackwells, commented: “Blackwells spent the last year engaging with GNL and RTL to secure various enhancements, including corporate governance improvements, that stand to benefit both companies’ shareholders for years to come. The Special Committees of GNL and RTL, per the disclosure in the proxies, negotiated multiple internalizations with the external manager in order to create this valuable corporate transformation. We estimate this will save the combined entity more than $75 million annually and give shareholders best-in-class corporate governance, tremendous scale, synergies, AFFO accretion, debt reduction and diversification. The internally managed combination is trading at an implied value of less than half that of its peer set currently, while we believe the merged entity will command a premium valuation as the market comes to understand the strength of a $10 billion REIT platform with all the attributes above.”