Westpac’s former head of mergers and acquisitions, Harvey Carter, is believed to be launching a new boutique advisory firm with a focus on deals involving companies related to financial services and investments.
Mr Carter worked as the bank’s head of M&A from 2004 to 2018 before launching Point King Capital, which offered long-term growth equity to entrepreneurs and sophisticated family offices.
He’s also worked as a director at the pet insurance business PetSure, which is owned by Hollard Insurance.
Former UBS real estate bankers Richard Hunt, Ian Holmes and Steve Hawkins started Denison Partners in May.
Mr Hunt previously launched his own firm Fort Street Advisors with Mr Holmes. It was sold to Evans and Partners and rebranded E&P Corporate Advisory.
Barrenjoey and Jarden set up as investment banks in the Australian market in 2020.
Last week Magellan Financial, which owns 36.4 per cent of Barrenjoey, revealed the latter was profitable for the 2024 financial year, saying profit from associates (largely Barrenjoey) was $3.1m, with 35 per cent revenue growth for the bank and flat operating costs.
Meanwhile, as previously reported by DataRoom, Westpac has its retail auto loan back book on the market.
Citi is working as an adviser on the deal.
With much of the loans probably already paid back, due to the short duration, some had suspected a debt collection agency might be the buyer, but the understanding now is that there is far broader interest.
In 2021, Westpac announced the sale of its motor vehicle dealer finance and novated leasing business to Cerberus Capital Management’s Angle Finance, where the private equity firm would pick up auto dealer and wholesale loans worth about $1bn, its strategic alliance agreements with vehicle manufacturers, and Novated lease origination capability and related agreements.
However, it retained its existing retail auto loans of around $10bn, which were originated by the businesses being offloaded.
Westpac said at the time that the loans would be run down in the normal course of business over the life of those loans and the bank would progressively stop writing new business for car loans, with customers instead able to use the bank’s consumer and business lending products to help buy motor vehicles.
The understanding is that Westpac would have sold the entire unit but parts were difficult to shift.
It is believed Westpac reaped about $400m from the sale.
The likely buyers are debt collection houses that would take on the remnants of the portfolio.
The sale came as part of a number of non-core businesses divested by the lender in recent years, including Westpac’s general insurance unit to Allianz for about $700m, and its life insurance business to Japan’s Dai-ichi for $900m.
It also made efforts to sell its $1bn wealth management platform business BT Panorama, but later opted to retain the operation.
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