mutton dressed up as lamb!, page-3

google elders at the moment makes some great reading this is where all your money actually goes to,

BOY, oh boy, get a load of the fees being handed out by Elders for its $550million raising.
Just to set the scene for the fees bonanza about to be enjoyed by a clutch of brokers, accountants and lawyers, new shares will be issued at 15 cents — a thumping 62per cent discount to the 39 cents last sale price.

The parties sharing the booty are Goldman Sachs JBWere, RBS Equity Capital Markets, Freehills, Ernst & Young and Caliburn.

They’ll collect a minimum of $24million in underwriting, management and advisory fees and, of course, that’s not the total drain on the Elders’ treasury from the capital raising, the refinancing and the flogging of assets.

No, gentle Elders shareholders, there won’t be much change out of $90million once all the costs are booked. The minutia of the gravy train looks like this: Sachs and RBS will pocket a 2.75per cent underwriting fee, a 0.75per cent management fee and a 1per cent fee on the $55million that will be put up by QBE.

Freehills did the legal work and are $400,000 the richer for the pleasure, and more fees might be billed.

Ernst & Young Transaction Advisory Services acted as the independent accountant for the equity raising and collected $1.4million, and maybe more. Ernst did some auditing work and the fees for that came to $300,000. And if that swag of moolah wasn’t enough, Caliburn also got into the act with a 1per cent fee for financial advice.

As well as that lot, the big winners will be the professional investors who get the heavily discounted $400million in stock.
And what about shareholders? Well, as is normal, these days, they’ll be thrown a few scraps in the shape of a $150million share purchase plan.