Thought as much... another leak in The Australian
Brookfield’s $6bn spree includes Aveo, Telstra assets
Brookfield appears poised to outlay more than $6 billion on assets in Australia and New Zealand in the space of a year, with the Canadian buyout fund said to be the frontrunner to buy Telstra’s data centres and likely to close a deal to buy retirement operator Aveo in the coming days.
It is understood senior members of Brookfield management will be arriving in Australia in about a week, with the trip understood to be for the Toronto-based buyout firm to finalise the purchase of Aveo, an Australian-listed retirement operator with a market value of $1.14bn.
Expectations are Aveo’s 24.4 per cent shareholder, Mulpha, will take some money off the table in the deal but will remain a major shareholder in the company when it is privatised. One theory is it may even hold four boardroom seats, while Brookfield holds five in the unlisted entity, with Mulpha owning at least 15 per cent.
Brookfield was first tipped as the likely buyer of Aveo by DataRoom on May 30 and the listed retirement operator has since told the market a deal was expected by June 30 following a sales process run by Bank of America Merrill Lynch.
Meanwhile, the trip to Australia by Brookfield executives could coincide with the finalisation of Telstra’s data centre sale, with sources saying they believe Brookfield is likely to be the buyer of the portfolio after it acquired Blackstone’s Australian data centres earlier this year for a price in the hundreds of millions.
Telstra’s data centres are thought to be worth a few hundred million and have been up for sale through Goldman Sachs. There was understood to have been activity in the data centres up until about a week ago. The expectation now is activity has stopped because a deal may have been finalised.
On offer are four data centres, in Sydney, Singapore, Hong Kong and London, with all of the assets except the London data centre secured as part of its acquisition of the Pacnet business in 2014. The London, Sydney and Hong Kong assets have been described as sub scale.
Collectively, the portfolio generates close to $100 million in revenue.
Brookfield Asset Management’s appetite for the targets come as private equity firms globally currently have a focus on buying infrastructure, information and technology and healthcare assets as part of a search for future growth.
This year it has already purchased the country’s second-largest private hospital operator, Healthscope, for $4.35bn and also struck a deal to acquire Vodafone New Zealand with Infratil for $3.2bn. It also comes as Brookfield is about to sell its half share in Genesee and Wyoming Australia to its joint venture partner Macquarie Infrastructure and Real Assets for $1bn.
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