TA Associates mulls exit at Fisher Funds; RFP out

afr.com:

US private firm TA Associates is ready for its payday at Fisher Funds, six years after it bought a 33.9 per cent stake in the now-$NZ22 billion Kiwi investing giant.

TA Associates dealmaker Ed Sippel. 

Street Talk understands TA Associates has sent a request-for-proposal to a handful of investment banks, including Goldman Sachs and Nomura, asking them to pitch their deal credentials and ideas around a potential sale of the buyout firm’s minority shareholding.

Sources said Goldman Sachs, in particular, would be well-placed to win the mandate, not least because of the long-time working relationship between Ed Sippel, TA Associate’s Asia boss, and Craig Murray, Goldies’ top gun for the Asia Pacific financial institutions advisory group. The Wall Street giant’s most recent deal for TA saw it sell Honan Insurance Group to NYSE-listed giant Marsh McLennan in August.

Should TA’s stake in Fisher Funds hit the auction block as expected, it would set the scene for a decent-sized, but complex, deal. TA owns its 34 per cent stake alongside Toi Foundation (formerly, TSB Community Trust), a philanthropic venture which also owns the TSB Bank and was set up to benefit Taranaki people and projects.

Toi has been a shareholder at Fisher Funds since 2014, and has no intention of checking out – meaning prospective bidders would have to consider life as a minority investor alongside an altruistic majority shareholder.

The 2022 annual report for Fisher Funds Management Limited shows the business generated $NZ199.4 million revenues and a whopping $NZ93.9 million after-tax profit on the back of its $NZ14.6 billion in funds under management.

And that was before TA’s dealmakers, Sippel and Michael Berk, bolted on Kiwi Wealth and its roughly $9