Ann: 1HFY23 Financial Highlights and Investor Presentation, page-8

Hi Saintex
The points you highlighted in your post (in italics beneath) are hugely important, and PNI does indeed need to:
- rebalance away from public equities (domestic and international equities)
- more interest in natural capital (ex. food and energy).
But I've also noticed that PNI have been relatively poorer at deploying capital in recent times.
The Five V Capital acquisition struck me as being an extremely desperate and ill-timed/expensive acquisition attempting to bolster their private markets exposure.
If PNI are so keen to boost their exposure to private markets and natural capital, I often wonder why they don't just lob a bid for Pacific Current Group (PAC) who are running rings around them in this space and making far smarter acquisitions. They could swallow PAC easily and this would be immediately value accretive due to the P/E arbitrage and provide instant diversification into this space for PNI via multiple new boutiques. PNI have a great distribution team, but they appear to have lost their mojo in terms of dealmaking. Also, Ian Macoun must be getting very close to retirement, and a takeover of PAC would potentially provide PNI with a new CEO who is a bit of a rainmaker and who has been extremely capital disciplined in building out his stable of boutiques.
Can anyone identify a meaningful downside to such a corporate action for PNI holders?