TA Associates runs auction for Honan Insurance; Steadfast, PSC look
TA Associates has quietly taken bids for its 80 per cent stake in Australia and New Zealand insurance broking roll-up Honan Insurance.
TA Associates dealmaker Ed Sippel. AFR
Street Talk can reveal Goldman Sachs collected non-binding indicative offers from interested parties last week. Sources said ASX-listed peers PSC and Steadfast Group, as well as a handful of buyout firms, were in the mix.
Sources said there had been radio silence from Honan’s camp since the bids were submitted,
The private equity firm and its Hong Kong-based managing director, Ed Sippel, are understood to be pushing for bidders to value their offers based on the $50 million in earnings projected for the 2025 financial year. That has not gone down well with Honan’s prospective suitors.
Should Goldman Sachs succeed in locking in a buyer, TA Associates would be taking money off the table after about three years. It bought into the business when TA was doing $14 million on the EBITDA line, paying a 15-times multiple in 2020.
Under TA Associates’s ownership, Honan has chased acquisitions aggressively, especially in strata and real estate, corporate risk and the employee benefits segments of the market. Its goal has been to pick market share off the big US-based brokers that dominate the market, including Marsh & McLennan, Willis Towers Watson, Arthur J Gallagher & Co and Aon.
Its latest acquisition was Certus Insurance Brokers, a 20-year-old New Zealand firm with 15 risk advisers and brokers operating out of Auckland, in a bid to bulk up its presence across the Tasman. It marked Honan’s sixth acquisition in six months.
The M&A spree has taken its headcount to about 450 across Australia and Asia and nearly $600 million in premiums under management. It’s
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