As the ripples spread through the heavily indebted property trust market courtesy of the global sub-prime storm, yet again we have to marvel at the brilliance of Macquarie Bank in navigating a safe path through.

Today’s victim is Australia’s second biggest shopping centre company, Centro, which, just like Northern Rock in the UK, will never be able to recover from the crisis of confidence and brand damage.

Unlike Northern Rock, investors in the various Centro wholesale funds, notably its two flagship WRAP products, are being told they can’t have their money back. Oh dear.

Macquarie Bank shares are only down $2.65 to $77.43 today, yet other heavily geared property players such as Goodman Group have been clobbered, falling 76c to a two year low of $4.80 in morning trade.

Macquarie Bank sold its 7.7% stake in the old Macquarie Goodman for $773 million last year, fetching $5.90 a share and booking a profit of $130 million. Talk about great timing.

Centro today revealed it has changed all its assumptions. Future Australian debt is now expected to cost 1.2 percentage points more, whilst US debt is up by 1 percentage point. Macquarie houses well over $100 billion of debt across its empire but almost half of this was hedged at fixed rates for seven years. Brilliant! Why didn’t Centro think of that?

Centro is about to become a household name in Australia even though many Australians have heard of it through major shopping centres such as The Glen in Melbourne. Check out the full list of its Australian centres here. Most are second division behind the mega Westfield centres and they are all for sale now.

The Centro boards are strong and should have known better. Centro Retail Trust and Centro Properties Group are both chaired by the respected Brian Healey and other directors include former National Mutual funds management boss Sam Kavourakis, former Myer managing director Peter Wilkinson, Axa director and former Freehills partner Paul Cooper and former BHP executive Jim Hall, who currently has his hands full as a Symbion Health director.

These blokes can’t hide because they signed up to CEO Andrew Scott’s unique model of using short term debt to plough aggressively into the US. Check out the $US5 billion New Plan takeover announcement from April this year as this transaction more than any other is what killed it.

Centro will now join the likes of Alan Bond, Westpac and National Australia Bank in coming a cropper in the US after promising the world.