It’s hard to go past the $2.2 billion Myer float for top spot in the list of Australian private equity disasters of the 21st century. The department store chain was relisted on the ASX in 2009, three years after a consortium led by US private equity firm TPG Capital bought the Melbourne-based business. Things went sour immediately when Myer closed below its offer price on day one. In the following years the share price has never traded above the IPO mark.

This was particularly galling for investors because TPG had no skin in the game after pocketing an estimated $1.5 billion from the float. For its part, TPG then became the subject of a major tax avoidance controversy. When the Australian Taxation Office took court action to freeze TPG’s bank accounts, claiming that substantial capital gains tax was owed, it found that all but $45 of the Myer sale proceeds had been transferred to offshore tax havens in Luxembourg and the Cayman Islands.