Woolworths’ Endeavour Group in focus

Woolworths is due to deliver its half-year results on Wednesday. PHOTO: MARIE NIRME

Woolworths is due to deliver its half-year results on Wednesday and one of the areas of focus will centre on the plans for its hotels and liquor business, Endeavour Group.

The expectation is that the supermarket giant will announce that it will move forward with a $10bn demerger of the business and offer more detail around timing.

Just under a year ago, Woolworths announced that its separation of Endeavour was on hold, amid the onset of the pandemic, until 2021.

The plan has always been to structurally separate the ALH hotels and pubs businesses and liquor chains Dan Murphy’s and BWS into a new business, now named Endeavour Group.

But during the pandemic, pubs were forced to close during lockdown periods.

Earlier, private equity groups such as Apollo, The Carlyle Group and BGH Capital were known to have been eager to buy Endeavour Drinks, but most believe a sale by Woolworths is unlikely.

Working on the separation had been UBS and Citi, while JPMorgan was working with the other ALH owner, Bruce Mathieson.

Elsewhere, Aware Super has now joined with Macquarie Infrastructure and Real Assets to buy Vocus.

This does not come as a major surprise, given that Aware Super had earlier been making efforts to buy telecommunications companies — namely Opticomm, which was instead sold to Uniti.

And finally, Greenhill investment banker Jon Gidney has been hired by investment bank Citi as its vice-chairman and head of financial institutions for Australia and New Zealand.

Mr Gidney joined Greenhill in 2015 from JPMorgan, where he was vice-chairman and previously headed mergers and acquisitions for Australia.