Margin Call: Fat fees as easy as BGH

Ben Gray, the ‘B’ in Healthscope suitor BGH Capital.

Less than four years after Ben “G” Gray floated Healthscope on the ASX, the shameless private equiteer has reunited the gang for his latest $4 billion idea: taking the Gordon Ballantyne-run Healthscope off the ASX.

Extraordinary opportunism? You betcha.

Is the Ormond College alumni Gray unembarrassable? Follow the money.

Will there be fat fees for the boys? Read on.

Last time around, the Melbourne-based Gray was the Australian head of American private equity giant TPG. Gray’s partner now at his new shop BHG is former Macquarie banker Robin “B” Bishop, while their third wheel is someone called Simon “H” Harle, who worked with Gray at TPG. For whatever reason they were dead keen on having an “H” in their title.

Bishop’s Macquarie was joint-lead manager on the 2014 float alongside UBS, who this time is clipping-the-ticket for Gray’s target Healthscope. The private hospital operator is still chaired by Paula Dwyer, who Gray installed in the $475,000-a-year job last time around.

Dwyer’s UBS defence team is lead by Kelvin Barry, her go-to investment banker who led the ultimately successful $11 billion gaming mega-merger last year of Tabcorp, which Dwyer also chairs, with Tatts Group.

Barry’s not the only gambler-turned-doctor. His Tatts rival in the Tabcorp tussle was Joe Fayyad, then a member of Christian Johnson’s Goldman Sachs investment banking team. Fayyad is now leading Bank of America Merrill Lynch’s Australian upstart investment banking squad in which role he is advising giant Canadian asset manager Brookfield on its rival $4-plus billion offer for Healthscope.

Merrills, by the way, like UBS, was also a joint-lead manager four years ago on the Healthscope float.

And of course, the lawyer drones are back in their grey business.

Mark Rigotti’s Herbert Smith Freehills is doing the paperwork for Dwyer’s Healthscope as her board assesses the rival bids. Back in 2014, Herbert Smith Freehills’s advised Gray’s TPG and its private equity partner Carlyle on their float.

That time around the private equiteers were pushing Healthscope onto the hapless mums and dads that invest in the public market. No fat fees for them.

Read the full Margin Call column tomorrow in print and online.