Macquarie’s MIRA may be hogging all theattention in telco infrastructure, but don’t forget about one of the local sector’s pioneers.
Bevan Slattery, best known for selling fibre optic group PIPE Networks to David Teoh’s TPG and founding data centre developer NextDC years before MIRA emerged as a player, appears to be gearing up for another big move of his own.
Slattery has beefed up his family office, Capital, recruitinga bunch of tech sector and financial services types in what is a clear signhe’s rolling up his sleeves and keen to get back in on the action.
He’s hired former Credit SuisseAustralia head of financial sponsors banker and QIC private equity dealmaker Evan Kilpatrick as Capital chief investment officer, and global telco executive Jim Clarke to run SUB.CO, a dark fibre investment.
And Slattery has also recruited theservices of Kate Jones, another Queenslander who served as a minister in thestate’s government and ran a bunch of portfolios including innovation and statedevelopment.
All up, it is understood Slattery has more thandoubled Capital’s team in recent months.
So the smart money is on Slattery making a big play, and the bigquestion is where he and his hefty team plan to strike.
His traditional hunting ground is in thetechnology sector, and specifically cloud, data and infrastructure. They’re allpretty hot areas, thanks to buyers like MIRA snapping up assets left, right andcentre.
Slattery’s existing investments include Oman Australia Cable, sonar radar group Fiber Sense and ASX-listed software companies intelliHR and Pointerra.
