Amid the COVID-19-related market rout, Public Storage (PSA) has shelved plans to acquire Australia-listed National Storage REIT (NSR).

In February 2020, National Storage REIT announced that it had received an unsolicited non-binding indicative proposal from PSA to acquire 100% of the REIT’s units for a cash price of AUD2.40 each.

It would have been an AUD1.9 billion (USD1.2 billion) takeover deal.

However, PSA advised on 18 March that it has decided not to pursue this offer at this time.

“Whilst we spent some time pursuing three unsolicited indicative offers that may have been attractive opportunities to maximise value for our securityholders we remained focussed on our core business throughout those discussions”, said Andrew Catsoulis, Managing Director of NSR.

NSR will continue to focus on its strategy of maximising returns via our diversified revenue streams as outlined in our 1H FY20 results discussion with our securityholders”, he added.