Endeavour tasks Citi and Jarden with clean-up on aisle Mathieson

afr.com:

Endeavour has tasked Citi and Jarden with advising it on what is turning into a difficult dispute with dissident shareholder Bruce Mathieson and the man he is backing for a spot on the board, ex-Myer chairman Bill Wavish.

Sources said the pubs and liquor retailing group had asked the two investment banks – with which it has had a long association – to provide advice on dealing with shareholder activism and engaging with investors.

The strategy at Dan Murphy’s is a point of contention between the company and its dissident shareholder, Bruce Mathieson. 

Naturally, some would wonder if the bankers – who advised Woolworths when the supermarket giant spun off its pubs and hotels business and listed it on the ASX as Endeavour – were also working on other options. There is no indication of that as yet. As Street Talk reported in June, Citi had already spoken to shareholders on behalf of the company, the operator of Dan Murphy’s, BWS and Jimmy Brings, along with a chain of pubs.

Tony Osmond’s bankers were asking investors about strategy and where they think the company should be headed. How prescient.

Then there’s Luminis Partners, specialists in dealmaking. They’ve sprung up, along with Arnold Bloch Leibler, on-side with the Mathieson family. Both sides are gearing up for the annual meeting later this month, where Wavish, who was on the board of Dick Smith Electronics before its spectacular collapse after being floated by Anchorage Capital Partners. He left the company’s board 10 months before it collapsed in early 2016.

As this column reported on Monday, both parties are gearing up to take their messages to investors, analysts and proxy advisors. Wavish, who was also a Woolworths executive and is being backed by the