Catalyst Securities investment analyst Anton de Goede said the price jump from 45c to a high of 99c was directly linked to JCI formerly Consolidated African Mines proposing a deal that would see it buying all the shares in the property company.

JCI, which is the majority shareholder in Rand Leases, last month offered minority shareholders 1,5 JCI shares for every Rand Leases unit. At the time Rand Leases MD Grant Fischer said the repositioning of Rand Leases as a development company had resulted in irregular income, and the body of shareholders who wanted to exit their holding could now do so at R1,12, the equivalent value in terms of the scheme for JCI shares.

Fischer said this would be attractive to shareholders because the trading range of Rand Leases had been between 40c and 50c a unit in the month before the announcement was made.

As a result of the deal, Rand Leases would be delisted and become a subsidiary of JCI.

De Goede said there was uncertainty surrounding the future of Rand Leases after it had received 29,4-million units in property loan stock company Redefine Income Fund, as well as cash in exchange for the sale of its R356m property portfolio to Redefine in December last year.

Rand Leases has sold some units since then and now has 23,5-million Redefine units.

De Goede said the uncertainty was due to its shift in focus from a property loan stock company to a low cost housing developer.

Low-cost housing was perceived as a high-risk venture.

Consequently the value in the Redefine unit price was not reflected in Rand Leases unit price because the market "discounted against the uncertainty of the strategy going forward".

De Goede said the uncertainty had been removed by the JCI takeover offer.

Rand Leases said yesterday that the market had been "quite positive" about the proposed offer. Shareholders would decide whether to accept the offer at a meeting in January next year.

At the end of September, Rand Leases reported a loss of R2,6m for the year to June, and attributed this to its repositioning as a development company.

This was, however, an improvement on last year's loss of R9,4m.