PROPERTY MILLIONS

What have a retired postman, the Crown Agents and the Moscow Narodni Bank in common? The answer is property-approximately £100m worth in the City of London.

Both the Bank, the Agents and the 104,000 pensioners of the Post Office are directly or indirectly involved in one of the largest real estate deals in the history of British capitalism.

For the agents and their partners,_Jack Walker and Ramon Green, two of the brightest stars in the world of property speculation, it has meant a cool £40m profit. In return the pensioners, who had no direct say in the deal, have found a greater proportion of their hard-earned savings sunk into fast-moving Droderty portfolios. 1-5--d trammano.

The organization that has shattered the image of pension funds as ultra-conservative bodies investing their millions in the safest blue-chip shares or gilt-edged • securities is the Post Office Stafi Superannuation Fund (the POSSF).

It has bought from English and Continental Properties buildings in the City of London, in Wales and in Scotland at an estimated value of £100m.

These include such well-known London monoliths as Cunard House and Bush House in the Strand.

SUPER PROFIT The principal benefactors have been the Crown Agents, an organization responsible for mainly overseas government interests and property and Messrs. Green & Walker.

The 49-per-cent stake held by the two property men who entered the market three and a half years ago has realized a super profit.

Cunard House, for example, was bought for £6.5m but valued in the POSSF deal at £23m. Bush House (Finance arranged c/o Moscow Narodni) was acquired for £23.5m and valued now at over £30m, making it Britain's most expensive office block.

The purchasing prices of the properties, which come with mortgages, is reported to be between £30m and f50m. The money was paid out of POSSE's fund, made up of the 6 per cent contributions paid each week by the Post Office's 400,000 workers, plus the contributions from the Corporation itself.

The transaction raised eyebrows in some quarters. Many people, including Jack Walker, consider the property boom to be 'peaked out'-things can go down faster than they go up.

But it is not the first time POSSF has been involved in property dealing. As far back as January 1971 the Trustees announced that they were moving into this market.

The first purchase was a relatively modest one-f14m worth of short leases and town centre developments.

These included a shop development undertaken with Corby_Development Corporation, Northamptonshire; a £2m freehold on nine supermarkets in Redhil!, Surrey; a joint industrial development with Rush-Tompkins at Haydock, Lancashire, and the ten-year residue lease on an office block in Finsbury Circus, London.

Later POSSF added another scalp to its belt when it provided finance for the Hay's Wharf development in London -the riverside property project that was the graveyard for hundreds of dock jobs.

But the English and Continental deal is the biggest of them all and it takes POSSF very close to the policy margin on property laid down by the Trustees.

The Fund was set up in October 1969 when the Post Office became a corporation. It took over all responsibility for paying benefits to 104,000 pensioners and collecting the contributions from the staff. Workers with 40 years' service can retire on half pay.

The sums involved are enormous. POSSF is probably the fastest-growing pension fund in the country: contributions add £100m a year. Such vast sums are a pole of attraction from the cash hungry City— millions of pounds are needed to finance the big deals.

Three weeks ago the Fund stood at f250m. There is a policy rule that only a quarter of this may be used for investment in property. POSSF already had £20m in earlier deals and the English and Continental transaction would appear to take the property portfolio right up to the margin.

The Tructess have thair nun LIC LIUDICES HAVE LUCIl UWII property advisers — Bernard Thorpe and Partners, and a spokesman for the Crown Agents considered POSSF had got a good deal. He said escalating , value of the Cunard Building alone demonstrated the millions to be m-le from property speculation.

But Jack Walker does not entirely agree. He told 'The Guardian' that he thought the property market had 'peaked out.' He admitted to Workers Press that he had made a subBelow : Messrs Greene and Walker—& 49-por-cent stake. stantial profit' on the deal. stantial profit' on the deal.

'We are a property company 'We are a property company that believes in golng out and creating values,' he said. 'We have no business sitting on these properties just holding onto them and "paying taxaHow are these values created?

'By the mere passage of time, the inflationary growth of property value or the loss of value in money if you like. We also prepare and renovate the property for sale. Cunard House has had a complete renovation and floor space has been added. It's a very worthwhile building.' SPECULATION The attitude of the 104,000 pensioners to the activities of the Trustees is unknown. Whether they approve of property speculation-which is opposed by the trade union movement —is not clear either.

However, it would be hard for the pensioners to influence the Trustees. They are appointed by the Post Office Board in consultation with the unions.

The employers side has three members: Kenneth Cad-