Bain’s done with the Insignia M&A battle, so where’s CC...

Bain’s done with the Insignia M&A battle, so where’s CC Capital?

Conditions are ripe for the last-standing suitor to reduce its bid.

Sarah Thompson, Kanika Sood and Emma Rapaport

Jun 6, 2025 – 5.00am

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It’s been three weeks since Bain Capital tapped out of the bidding war at Insignia Financial – and even longer since we heard a peep out of the last-standing suitor CC Capital.

The stock is trading at $3.62, which is miles off the $5 per share that both bidders had offered. Not surprisingly, plenty of investors have questioned if the New Yorker is still working to firm up its non-binding indicative bid from March – or if it is about to walk out with an excuse such as “macro uncertainty” that Bain Capital cited in its parting note.

Chinh Chu, founder and senior manager of CC Capital Partners. Bloomberg

Street Talk can reveal that, despite the radio silence, CC Capital is still very much at the table and keen to secure a foothold in the Australian financial services market.

Sources said securing debt funding for its $3.4 billion bid has emerged as the sticking point for CC Capital. But its bankers are pushing hard to secure a leveraged loan from non-US banks.

Once CC has found a lender syndicate, its dealmakers can be expected to weigh if their $5 bid is worth sticking to.

Competitive tension fades

You only have to look at how Insignia shares are trading to know that CC Capital meeting its $5 bid for Insignia is the best-case scenario. More likely is a price cut.

CC is entering its fifth month in due diligence, and both Bain and Brookfield have looked and passed. Sources said Bain wouldn’t have had any troubles lining up financing to buy Insignia. It was Insignia’s future prospects that turned out to be the dealbreaker for the PE bigwig.

Bain had to offer $5 to get Insignia to open its books, but then Donald Trump’s “liberation day” hit equity markets and threatened the fortunes of anything tied to the sharemarket. Against this backdrop, we don’t blame any bidders asking hard questions about what Insignia is going to look like in three to five years, and whether the bid needs a haircut.

Second guessing

Of note, if CC Capital reduced its bid, it would be an exceptionally rare circumstance. Analysis from Herbert Smith Freehills shows that since 2022, private equity has only reduced its price 9 per cent of the time during due diligence.

Deutsche Bank-advised CC Capital will also be weighing up whether Insignia would accept anything lower than $5.

For the board, and its defence advisers Citigroup and Gresham Advisory Partners, they know that if CC Capital walks, the share price would trade at a lot less than $5 – so they have to be sure they have a strategy in place to grow earnings.

Bain Capital has since refocused its efforts on another financial services player – Perpetual Wealth Management, where Barrenjoey is running a sale process.