Aussie giant shapes as frontrunner in Westpac's Hastings sale...

Aussie giant shapes as frontrunner in Westpac's Hastings sale

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Australia's alternative asset management heavyweight, Macquarie Group, may be about to get even bigger.

Street Talk understands Macquarie's infrastructure investment arm - Macquarie Infrastructure and Real Assets - is assessing a big play to bulk up its Australian infrastructure portfolio via Westpac Banking Corp's up for sale business, Hastings Funds Management.

Sources said MIRA was the lead contender in the Hastings auction, which is slated to come to a head as soon as Thursday, and is closing in on a deal.

MIRA's interest comes as the manager increases its footprint in Australia via string of deals in the past two years. While MIRA is well known in other parts of the world, it has taken until only recently to raise an Australian dollar fund and focus in its home country.


When it comes to Hastings, the $200 million question is what MIRA would actually be buying.


While Westpac's Hastings manages about $10 billion investments globally, about $6 billion of that is locked up in Australian airports and other infrastructure assets as part of one fund, the Utilities Trust of Australia.

Without UTA, Hastings' footprint shrinks dramatically. And UTA's underlying investors could opt to walk at any time, taking their $6 billion mandate to another manager or even setting up its own team.

UTA's underlying investors - including powerful industry superannuation funds such as CBUS and HESTA - are known to be watching the situation closely. Some are already known to be fed up with Westpac's repeated efforts to sell Hastings over the past 18 months.

In the back of their minds, though, is understood to be a $180 million deferred performance fee that would become payable should it replace the manager.

Hastings has been a solid fund for Westpac without being a gem so if this goes through the smart lads at the Mac should find a way to squeeze some more juice from these Assets.

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Hotlegs