business spectator - is it true?

Private equity firms can't afford to buy Rio's Alcan Engineered Products in full, so they're looking at the parts. Could the same be said of Asciano? Plus, news on Macquarie Infrastructure, GM Holden and more.

Asciano

The apparent failure of private equity groups to get €4 billion together to buy AEP (see above), Europe's biggest supplier of aluminium parts to the aerospace industry, could shed some light on how the bidding process for Asciano will pan out. Asciano said earlier this month that four bidders were looking at the company in its totality, but suggestions have since emerged that the number is now down to two – TPG Capital and a consortium of Kaplan Funds Management and Carlyle Group, two of the same groups that left the AEP process. It is thought that the sum of Asciano’s parts could be worth less than the value of the parts sold off separately. If so, it would then make sense to include the likes of the Port of Singapore, Queensland Rail and Hutchison Whampoa in the front-running; all parties believed to favour individual divisions of the troubled group. The Asciano sale process may prove strangely analogous to a chapter in the history of the Italian town of the same name. The hillside Tuscan township of Asciano was fought over between Siena and Florence in the Battle of Montaperti, 1260, but while the Sienese won, it was not until 25 years later that Asciano was actually purchased.


not sounding too flash...