THE partnership behind one of Cape Town’s most successful entrepreneurial ventures, Master Currency, has been re-united with the launch of a R750 million property fund.

The Vividend Income Fund – which listed on the JSE late last year and which already owns a substantial property in Cape Town – re-unites Master Currency founder KK Combi and former Master Currency CEO Ari Jacobson.

Combi and Jacobson were presumably ‘forced’ to look for new business opportunities after industrial conglomerate Bidvest (the owner of Rennies) bought the Master Currency foreign exchange business several years ago.

The Vividend, which carries a value of R570 million, operates out of Kloof Street in Gardens.

While the fund is still accumulating real estate, there is already one significant Cape-based property in the form of 4 Louis Gradner Street in Roggebaai in the portfolio. The Gradner Street property is worth R55 million.

Jacobson – a former financial journalist at the Cape Times during the early nineties – reckons Vividend’s intended property portfolio will be adequately diversified to maintain an acceptable level of risk weighting within each sector.

It seems Vividend will scour the property niches that were dominated by major players like Growthpoint or Redefine, and look for opportunities priced between R30 million to R100 million. In time the fund may well come to replicate the structure of Spearhead or Paramount Properties, two successful real estate funds that were head quartered in the Cape.

Jacobson says: “The strong presence of well established and robust A and B category anchor tenants, coupled with low vacancies and medium-term expiry profiles, provide adequate stability for the creation of sustainable net income growth into the future.”

If Vividend’s acquisition strategy unfolds as planned, Jacobson says the company is forecasting an annualised distribution yield to linked unit holders of 8.11% for the year ending 31 August 2011.

A rather attractive annualised distribution yield of 11.04% for the year ending August 2012 has been pencilled in.