Former Keating tech guru seals $48m deal for his Qld firm

A Queensland tech entrepreneur has sold the company he founded more than a decade ago for $48m in a merger deal with an ASX-listed cyber security firm.

Danny Maher who is boss of award winning open software company Opmantek. Picture: NIGEL HALLETT

Gold Coast tech entrepreneur Danny Maher is selling the software company he founded more than a decade ago to ASX-listed cyber security outfit FirstWave.

Maher, a former IT guy for Labor PM Paul Keating in the 1990s, will become chief executive of FirstWave on completion of the deal with his firm Opmantek. The deal is valued at $62m, which a $14m equity raising. Maher, who currently owns about 42 per cent of Opmantek, will hold approximately 258m FirstWave shares, or 15.5 per cent of the combined company. That stake will be valued at $18m based on the 7c a share equity raising price. The other almost 60 shareholders in Opmantek will hold $30m FirstWave shares.

Maher was named Australian CEO of the Year in 2015 and is the chairman of Gold Coast United Football Club.

Opmantek, a network management provider with global clients that include NASA and Microsoft, sells software used by over 150,000 companies across 178 countries.

The scrip-based offer will see the companies effectively merge, with Opmantek shareholders receiving 42 per cent of the shares in the combined entity.

FirstWave executive chairman John Grant says rarely do you find two companies that fit together as perfectly as FirstWave and Opmantek. 

“In a case of the whole being greater than the sum of its parts, both companies bring highly complementary business models, product offerings and geographic footprints,” says Grant, who is a member of the Australian IT industry’s Hall of Fame and was the inaugural chair of the Australian Rugby League Commission.

Danny Maher is boss of award winning open software company Opmantek. Picture: NIGEL HALLETT

PRIVIUM DEBTS

Queensland building giant Privium Group had less than $400 in the bank after it collapsed leaving hundreds of unfinished homes and debts in excess of $80m.

Creditors met Monday to discuss the fallout from the collapse that is set to be one of the nation’s biggest building firmfailures.

According to documents lodged with ASIC by liquidator FTI Consulting, Privium owes creditors more than $80m, much of it inthe form of loans to related entities in the group. The Priviun Group – including Privium Assets, Privium Investments and Privium Civil – is owed more than $47m in loans.

Privium founder Rob Harder is a director of several related entities as well as more than 80 other companies. Mr Harder called in voluntary administrators earlier this month, with the company leaving hundreds of home owners in the lurch across Queensland, Victoria and NSW.

Creditors heard that excluding intercompany loans, the Privium group of companies owes about $41m including a $23m secured loan to Bank of New York Mellon and $18m to unsecured creditors.

The company had 890 homes around the country that were either under construction or in the preconstruction phase.

ROB Harder started life on the tools as a builder’s labourer and carpenter.

Creditors were told various companies in the group performed different roles, with Privium Investments holding sums of money for investment, Privium Assets acting as the treasury for the business and a separate company called Impact Specs owning land.

Privium’s latest financial accounts also showed the company lent $6.5m in 2019 to a company called Property Alternative Group,of which Mr Harder also is a director. Under that arrangement Property Alternative Group built and sold property to buyers with Privium funding and taking on the risk of development.

The company’s books also revealed it was using Bartercard to help fund operations as it careered towards a collapse raising red flags about its finances months before it called in administrators. The Queensland-based company had $3.4m of Bartercard “currency” at cost on its books as of June last year, which it intended to use to run the company.

Mr Harder, who is a prominent member of Brisbane’s Hillsong church, started his career as a carpenter before building Privium into one of the nation’s biggest construction firms.

Privium, which did not file its financial accounts for the most recent financial year, reported a $28m loss in the 2019-2020 financial year and paid more than $22m in dividends.