Game on at target Austal, as cashed-up buyout fund preps formal offer
After a month of rumination, one of Austal’s North American suitors is close to stumping up the cash.
Street Talk can reveal New York’s JF Lehman & Company, which specialises in investing in complex and regulated sectors, is preparing to lodge an offer for the ASX-listed shipbuilder as early as this week and has tapped Morgan Stanley for help with diligence and funding.
JP Lehman joins a process thick with interest. Street Talk previously reported Cerberus Capital Management, a $US60 billion ($88 billion) alternative asset investor, had hired Citi as it considers making an offer, while Washington defence specialist Arlington Capital Partners is another interested party.
Despite the intense private equity interest, Austal still trades at a discount to US-listed shipbuilders including Huntington Ingalls, General Dynamics and Lockheed Martin.
Then there’s Joe Hockey’s Bondi Partners, where the former Australian ambassador in Washington DC and ex-federal treasurer was at work trying to put together a consortium to keep the company – which could be a major beneficiary of the AUKUS defence pact between Australia, the United States and the United Kingdom – in local hands.
At the centre of the fray are bankers at Austal’s defence advisers, JPMorgan and West Australian boutique Poynton Stavrianou, both of whom have made no secret of the bidder frenzy surrounding the shipbuilder.
JF Lehman is a middle-market private equity firm focused on aerospace, defence and maritime sectors. It has some $US4 billion in assets under management. Earlier this year, it was part of a consortium alongside Apollo Global Management and Hill City Capital that acquired Atlas Air Worldwide in a deal worth about $3 billion. Atlas Air is one of the
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