Danish Pension Fund Buys 90,000 Acres in New York

Published reports indicate that the Adirondack Chapter of the Nature Conservancy has sold 90,593+ acres of the former Finch Paper holdings to a subsidiary of the Danish pension fund ATP. The sale to ATP was handled on a sealed bid basis by LandVest. The acreage will be managed by RMK Timberland Group, a business unit partner of Regions Morgan Keegan Trust and Morgan Asset Management, and is subject to both a fiber supply agreement with the current owners of the Finch Pruyn mill and a conservation easement.
The Land Report reported on the original sale in the August 2007 issue and the estimated sales price per acre in 2007 was $683 per acre. According to the Timberland Blog, the 2009 purchase price was 180 million Kroners, which comes to about $361 per acre or almost 50 percent less than The Nature Conservancy paid two years ago primarily because of the conservation easement.