The Monthly Recap – December/January
2024 ended and 2025 kicked off with a bang. Trump began his second disjointed term and has dominated headlines with the volatile markets of his first term looking likely to return. China scared the AI-crazy market with their ChatGPT competitor and Trumps tariffs have not been taken kindly. Locally, inflation numbers were printed and printed low which excited many of rate drops coming and coming quick. Fund are sitting on much dry powder and have assets they want to offload. When (if) rates come down soon could we see the promised M&A rebound we have been waiting for? This report outlines selected M&A deals, general market activity and significant news among the investment bank & private equity firms, plus any significant news across debt markets.
M&A
- GIC acquired a 5% stake in Brisbane Aiport (AFR) Royal Schiphol also increased their stake (AFR)
- Advent Partners sold its NZ SaaS service to American firm, Enable for $150m+ (AFR)
- IFM Investors acquired a 49% stake in Splend, a rideshare financier, with HESTA amongst co-investors (AFR)
- Armitage Associates acquired a majority stake in Redcat (AFR)
- PEP’s takeover bid for $1.2bn SG Fleet was accepted (Australian)
- Adamantem inked a deal to buy wealth platform Mason Stevens (Australian)
- iPartners signed a deal to buy a majority stake in Mi Funds Management, offers private credit funds to retail investors (AFR)
- TPG Capital invested in a majority stake into EQT-owned Five Good Friends (AFR)
- Telstra acquired Boost Mobile for $140m (AFR)
- ICG completed the acquisition of payments platform SuperChoice from Potentia Capital (AFR)
- CDPQ paid NZ$909m for 50% stake in Spark & OTPP’s telco tower business (Australian)
Other Activity
- Navitas secured a cash injection from BGH and co-investors (AFR)
- Quadrant banked $660m for its third growth fund (AFR)
- Genesis Capital raised $350m in their latest vehicle to target healthcare deals (AFR)
- Keyview Financial Group eyeing a larger role in special sits with $100m facility from Goldman Sachs (AFR)
- UniSuper exited its remaining interest in APA Group (Australian)
- Euroclear invested $752m in TCorp taking 4.92% off the hands of the LSEG (AFR)
- CEFC paid $25m to take a minority stake in Palisade’s Energy Locals (AFR) Palisade also agreed terms to set up a $300m retirement living platform with Zig Inge Group (AFR)
- Private Equity keen to offload worth more than $2bn in childcare assets with staffing challengers a key issue (Australian)
- Bain Capital on the offensive for Insignia Financial, matching CC Capital’s offer of $2.9bn (Australian)
Investment Banking News & Debt Markets
- Bankers gearing up for bumper year with $18.4bn of dry powder across private markets and rate cuts on the horizon (Australian)
- Morgan Stanley bonuses up around 10-15% for most with star performers seeing as much as 50% increases (AFR) JP Morgan also provided good enough” bonuses whilst not quite a blockbuster season (AFR)
- Citi lost up to $70m on a $1.9bn selldown of Goodman Shares (Australian)
- HSBC preparing to wind down M&A/Capital Markets business in Europe/UK/US (CNBC)
- Databricks $24bn financing features major institutional investors with Temasek and Macquarie Capital announced as investors (AFR)
- Bis Industries refinance $150m with Carlyle and Varde Partners involved for the third time in as many years (AFR)
- JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs top ECM and M&A deal tables respectively (AFR) see why Goldman Sachs and UBS came out on top of the M&A table (Australian)
- Affinity closed its $515m debt financing, underwritten by ING (AFR)
- Jarden deal-makers hyper-focused on gaining market share in the ECM advisory market (Australian)
- Debt Capital Market proceeds up in 2024 with 16% growth with greater confidence amongst corporates (Australian)
Market Moves
- Citi promoted 344 to Managing Director this year, with 5 across Australia & NZ(Australian)
- Matthew Moffat joined Goldman Sachs from Jefferies as Head of Blocks & Liquidity (AFR)
- Firetrail lost 4 across investments Strategy/PM/Analyst and Specialist roles (AFR)
- Layton Bonnici poached by Barrenjoey to join as Head of Technology, had spent 15 years with RBC (AFR)
- Chris Gawler exited Goldman Sachs where he was in the small-cap equity research team (AFR) Aaron Lamshed also left the firm where he was Head of ECM & Head of Syndicate (AFR)
- Simone Haslinger, ex-JP Morgan ECM co-head to lead quant fund manager East Coast Capital Management (AFR)
- Tim Usasz joined Morgans from UBS to head up ECM Syndicate (AFR)
- Wilsons Advisory hired Bryan Tan to head its healthcare corporate finance team, joined from MST (AFR)
- PwC’s Adam Lai heads to childcare group Nido Education (AFR)
- Canaccord Genuity poaches Citi TMT head Sam Forman to target a bigger slice of Tech M&A (AFR)
- PAG hired Ben Hall ex-KKR Head of Credit for ANZ (AFR)
- Ben Scott left Barrenjoey (AFR)
- Andrew Quail joined Canaccord Genuity for its Australian equity sales team (AFR)
- 1851 Capital hired Tom Camilleri from Wilsons Advisory (AFR)
- Emilio Gonzalez, ex-Pendal chief executive, joined DNR Capital in Brisbane (AFR)
