News
07/03/2007 - CVC emerges as frontrunner for New Zealand Yellow Pages
Private equity fund CVC Asia Pacific is emerging as the frontrunner to buy Telecom's Yellow Pages directories business, which looks set to fetch a sum at the top end of analysts' expectations.
Market sources suggested yesterday that CVC had its nose in front of the other three short-listed bidders. However, sources said there remained time for one of the rival bidders to raise the ante.
Telecom's adviser, investment bank Goldman Sachs JBWere, is understood to have pushed back the deadline for final bids by about a week from the initial March 15 deadline.
A price of about $2.3 billion, about 14 times Yellow Pages' annual earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (ebitda), is tipped. This would stack up well against similar overseas deals. Seven international sales of directories businesses in the past two years were made on ebitda multiples of between 10 and 15.9 times. Analysts have suggested Telecom should get between $1.6 billion and $2.3 billion for Yellow Pages.
CVC, a buyout group focused on Europe and the Asia-Pacific region, has previously led consortiums that bought the Formula One Group and Italy's equivalent of Yellow Pages, Seat Pagine Gialle.
It operates through 16 international offices including one in Sydney.
Goldman whittled down a list of about 10 bidders, including Australian telecommunications group Telstra, to the short-list of four last month. CVC's remaining rival bidders include Hong Kong-based CCMP Capital Asia, American private equity giant Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co and a partnership between Sydney-based Pacific Equity Partners and America's Bain Capital.
The remaining bidders are now going through due diligence.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/3983935a13.html
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