Meet Telstra’s advisory line-up for Versent tilt
There was no rest for Telstra’s bankers this weekend as they bunkered down to finalise a bid for Versent, the loss-making cybersecurity play on the market via Goldman Sachs.
Street Talk understands Telstra has had advisory boutique Record Point and Gilbert + Tobin helping prepare its binding offer for Versent, which analysts reckon could morph the telco giant into a full-service IT provider.
Record Point managing director James Roth – who oversaw regional TMT coverage for UBS for over a decade and saw off the likes of Barrenjoey and Macquarie to secure the mandate – is understood to be running point on the deal. And it’s far from Gilbert + Tobin’s first rodeo for Telstra. The law firm was on the tools for the telco’s $2.1 billion acquisition of Digicel Pacific in 2021. The South Pacific’s largest telco was being offloaded by Irish billionaire Denis O’Brien after pressure from bondholders.
Telstra chief Vicki Brady confirmed the company was in talks with up-for-sale Versent. Bloomberg
The mooted Versent deal, expected to be worth as much as $400 million, wasrevealed by Street Talk on Thursday. Telstra chief executive Vicki Brady confirmed the company was participating in the sale process on Friday, although she noted that there was “no certainty a transaction involving Telstra will eventuate”.
Versent provides cloud transformation and security products and services. Its crown jewel is proprietary cloud software, called Stax, which manages Amazon Web Services cloud computing environments and in 2021 appointed Paul Migliorini, former boss of AWS for Australia and New Zealand, as its chief executive.
The business, started by former National Australia Bank executives, sees a pathway to $300 million revenue within three years,
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