PEP-backed Veda Advantage targets IPO

According to the Australian, the Sydney-based buyout firm has already secured cornerstone investors for the offering, which is forecast to give the company a market value of A$1billion. The deal is priced at 12.5 times pro forma 2013 EBITDA of about A$100 million. PEP, which will not be selling its shares, will have a 60% stake after the share sale.

Veda operates the primary credit bureaus in Australia and New Zealand and is now a principal source of consumer credit information. The company forecasts that demand for its data-driven services will increase as consumers seek not only information about themselves but ways to ensure they are not subject to fraud and misreporting of their true financial position.

PEP acquired its stake in Veda back in 2007 in a joint deal with Merrill Lynch Global Private Equity in which the pair agreed to pay A$963 million for a 100% stake.

UBS AG and Citigroup Inc are the lead managers of the IPO. Highbury Partnership - the boutique investment bank run by former JPMorgan Chase & Co investment bankers Matthew Roberts and Alan Young - is also advising PEP.

Separately, PEP is reported to be close to selling Australian clothes hanger and packaging firm Braiform to the company management - according to the Wall Street Journal. PEP acquired Braiform in 2012 as part of its A$724 million buyout of services business Spotless Group.

Since then, it has run Braiform as a separate company. Financial details of the transaction are not known. The firm, which has an EBITDA of around A$6 million, supplies the likes of Nike, H&M with around almost 3 billion clothes hangers a year. It reuses a third of those, and recycles more than 200 million.

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• Topics
• Buyouts
• Australasia
• Financials
• Australia
• Financial Services
• Pacific Equity Partners
• buyout