Pacific Current block trades after Regal walks

afr.com:

A parcel of 2.18 million shares in ASX-listed funds management business Pacific Current, representing 4.2 per cent of the company, changed hands after market close on Friday evening.

Suzi Carp, co-founder at River Capital, the largest shareholder at Pacific Current. Joe Armao

The trade was done at $10.10 a share, the same as Pacific Current’s closing share price. It was worth $22 million.

Interestingly, term sheets don’t seem to have gone out broadly to investors, implying it was arranged bilaterally. However, the identity of the buyer and the seller weren’t known.

It came a day after Regal Partners yanked its $600 million cash and scrip bid for Pacific Current, saying it had been “consistently disappointed with the engagement” with the target board since its initial approach in March. Regal had a co-operation agreement with King River Capital, giving the bid a combined 31.9 per cent voting power in its favour.

UBS, which has been tending to Pacific Current, has already shortlisted bidders and is due to call for binding offers around October 17, Chanticleer reported. PAC’s ASX-listed offshoot, GQG Partners, has announced an intention to submit a bid but is yet to make its proposal public.

There’s no shortage of investors with chunky shareholdings on Pacific Current’s register: King River is the largest with 19.8 per cent, followed by Perpetual at 14.4 per cent and Regal Partners at 12 per cent. There’s also Mike Fitzpatrick, formerly of Hastings Funds Management, who owned 5.3 per cent of Pacific at the time of last year’s annual report.

Worth noting, Fitzpatrick trimmed his position slightly and dipped below the substantial mark in mid-September – in his first trading in Pacific Current’s stock since 2017. As for the