Regal Partners-led consortium lobs knock-out offer for PAC
Apex predator Regal Partners is teaming up with River Capital to make a bid for ASX-listed investment house Pacific Current Group (PAC), sources told Street Talk.
Regal is a 12 per cent shareholder on PAC’s register alongside Melbourne-headquartered asset manager, River Capital, which as PAC’s largest investor, sits on a 19 per cent stake. The non-binding indicative offer implies a value of $10.77 a share, a 42 per cent premium to last night’s close, valuing PAC at $586 million.
PAC MAN: Regal’s Phil King, one of the country’s best known fund managers, is seeking to gobble up another funds management firm. Brook Mitchell
UBS is advising PAC; Barrenjoey Capital Partners is tending to the Brendan O’Connor-led Regal; while Macquarie Capital is in River Capital’s camp.
Regal has been increasingly acquisitive, snapping up Rob Luciano’s listed VGI Partners before lobbing an $1.74 billion bid for Perpetual alongside Baring Private Equity Asia.
This time, it has PAC in its sights. PAC, with a market capitalisation of just over $400 million, is a global multi-boutique asset management business. Buying PAC will give the Phil King-founded Regal a range of new strategies in property, private equity, private credit and real assets. There are good synergies on revenues and costs, sources said.
The bid is expected to be in cash or Regal shares, and would include a spin out of the fund manager’s GQG stake. Discussions, Street Talk understands, have been under way since March. It is the third non-binding indicative offer lobbed in PAC’s direction.
The listed Regal is the product of the 2022 merger of Robert Luciano’s VGI Partners and Regal Funds Management, becoming the new face of the alternatives asset class on the ASX. Last year,
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