Medibank Private float a $26m fee-for-all for bankers

JUST how healthy a return Medibank Private will make for investors will be a matter for the market, but the privatisation process is already guaranteed to put a rosy glow on the cheeks of investment bankers, lawyers and accountants sharing in the lucrative fee stream from the $5.5 billion float.

Finance Minister Mathias Cormann, who is usually seen bemoaning the evils of out-of-control government spending, has loosened the purse strings with at least $26 million to be laid out in fees during the IPO.

The joint lead managers of the initial public offering, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs and Macquarie, are guaranteed a base fee of $5m plus an incentive fee of an additional $5m if all goes as planned.

INTERACTIVE: Medibank Private share offer

They also stand to reap millions more in commissions on share sales to insto investors.

No such at-risk remuneration for the professional firms, who are pocketing a handy total of $16.9m, guaranteed.

The biggest winner, trousering $4m, is the Commonwealth’s legal adviser, King & Wood Mallesons.

Deloitte, which is giving Medibank business and accounting advice, is to get $3.8m. The government’s business adviser, boutique investment banker Lazard, is to receive $3.5m and its legal adviser, Herbert Smith Freehills, is to receive $3m. Ernst & Young is to receive a little over $2m.

Digital dynamo

STILL on floats, if Quadrant Private Equity successfully gets advertising billboard business APN Outdoor away next month it’ll be the second company to list this year featuring former Fairfax Media executive Jack Matthews at the board table.

Matthews is to be paid $90,000 a year as an independent director at APN in return for experience including his “integral role in the success of Fairfax’s digital strategy”.

Matthews’s other ASX-listed company, loyalty card scheme Rewardle, listed on October 7 at 20c, surging to stag at 28c.

A law unto themselves

CONGRATULATIONS to former Harvey Norman finance boss John Skippen, who was yesterday re-elected as chairman of Slater & Gordon after accidentally serving an extra year in between facing shareholders.

Due to an “administrative oversight”, the law firm, which specialises in making sure other companies comply exactly with their legal obligations, forgot to put Skippen up for election at last year’s AGM. So instead they did it at yesterday’s AGM, where he romped it in with more than 99 per cent of the vote.

Growth industry

IT doesn’t seem to have enough money to issue reliable employment statistics, and some staff seem more interested in making a buck on the side by insider trading on economic data than doing their jobs, but it’s good to see the Bureau of Statistics has everything under control when it comes to indoor plants.

The ABS has just opened a tender to supply “live indoor plant services” to ABS offices.

The winning tenderer is responsible for “the immediate removal of all dead or dying plants”. There’s also to be a register of every single plant, showing what is where.

Hopefully, it’ll prove more accurate than July and August’s unemployment numbers.

Sound advice

IT’S convention season in Melbourne, with last week’s Jehovah’s Witnesses world get-together overlapping with this week’s annual Australian Pipeline Industry Association.

But it looks like the pipe layers party harder, with the chief of APA Group, Mick McCormack, taking to the drum kit during Sunday night’s opening shindig.

The band, the APA All Stars, belted out a set of golden oldies — but, sadly, not the 1962 instrumental surf classic Pipeline.

Objection overruled

MARGIN Call hates to correct m’learned friends, but the man charged with murder over a ­late-night assault at a Melbourne McDonald’s on the weekend, Kyle Zandipour, is not an investment banker, as his lawyer George Defteros reportedly told a court on the weekend.