CSC victory in Trafford Centre fight

Britain's biggest shopping centre owner yesterday won shareholder approval for a £1.6 billion takeover of Manchester's Trafford Centre despite opposition from one of its biggest investors.

Capital Shopping Centres - which owns the Braehead development on the outskirts of Glasgow - was given the all-clear for its deal at a shareholder meeting, but said 20 per cent of investor votes failed to back the takeover.

US giant Simon Property Group, which owns 5 per cent of Capital, had waged a campaign against the acquisition and tried to launch a takeover offer for Capital instead. It walked away from its pursuit earlier this month after failing to gain access to Capital's books.

Capital, which owns 14 shopping centres in the UK, said it was "delighted" with the shareholder vote. Not including withheld votes, 82 per cent of ballots cast were in favour of the deal.

But a total of 101.1 million votes were either cast against or withheld, representing 20.4 per cent of total shareholder votes.

Simon Property said it remained concerned over the deal, which will hand a 23 per cent stake in the enlarged business to Peel Holdings, the current owner of the Trafford Centre. Simon claims Capital is overpaying for the Trafford centre and opposes the terms of the deal. The shareholder vote paves the way for the deal to complete tomorrow and will see Peel's boss, billionaire John Whittaker, become Capital's deputy chairman.