Forest Products Firm to Convert to REIT

Potlatch Corp., a forest products company based in Spokane, Wash., has announced the approval by its board of directors of a restructuring to convert the company into a real estate investment trust.Under the conversion plan, income from the company's 1.5 million acres of timberland assets will qualify for REIT tax treatment, and all its nonqualifying operations will be transferred into a wholly-owned taxable REIT subsidiary. "Converting to a REIT structure will increase our cash flow, facilitating a much larger annual distribution to stockholders," said L. Pendleton Siegel, Potlatch's chairman and chief executive officer. "It will also provide a lower cost of capital for future forestland acquisitions, while continuing to allow us to maintain the competitiveness of our TRS operations." The company can be found online at http://www.potlatchcorp.com.