Healius is the latest company that has caught the attention of opportunistic investor John Wylie, with his firm amassing a stake of at least 5 per cent.
Mr Wylie emerged as a substantial shareholder in Healius on Thursday, when the company revealed that his Tanarra Capital had a 5.15 per cent stake.
There has been talk in the market that mergers and acquisition activity is on the agenda for Healius, which owns pathology and radiology businesses.
Mr Wylie typically takes stakes in companies where corporate activity is afoot, or they are trading at a low value and he can agitate for change.
Tanarra bought up a 5.44 per cent stake last year in GrainCorp spin-off United Malt, which has been earmarked as a takeover target for some time.
He also bought shares in Boral and made approaches around the market to private equity firms about a possible break-up of the business before it was purchased by Seven Group.
Mr Wylie also has shares in Humm, which is selling its consumer finance unit to Latitude Financial, a move being fought by founder and former chair Andrew Abercrombie.
Mr Abercrombie was making attempts to work with a private equity buyer for nonbank lender Humm late last year, as reported by DataRoom.
One of his most recent targets has been Lendlease, also talked about as a takeover target in real estate circles of late. The thinking is that Mr Wylie would like to see Lendlease broken up and value extracted.
There has been chatter that construction groups have been approached as to whether they would be interested in buying the Lendlease construction business, although the company denies it is for sale.
Analysts say the construction arm is an important component for Lendlease, providing in-house services for its development arm.
A Japanese group apparently weighed a purchase of the Lendlease construction unit some time ago, but walked away.
The Australian reported in April that Tanarra Capital was demanding changes at Lendlease, including an exit of its retirement portfolio, some local markets and changes to the way that its executives are paid.
This is after weak returns, partly linked to major project writedowns over recent years in its engineering arm, which has since been divested.
Healius has been subject to an attempted takeover twice before – once by China’s Jangho in a $2bn bid, and again by Partners Group.
This was before it sold off its medical centre division in 2020 to BGH Capital for about $500m.
The move has left the company cashed up.
Healius has also sold its smaller Adora fertility business.
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