Pacific Equity Partners is taking pitches for a strategic review of its United States stock transfer agent, American Stock Transfer and Trust Company. 

Street Talk understands PEP has asked at least half a dozen investment banks to pitch their credentials and ideas for AST's review, which is expected to consider a United States initial public offering or trade sale. 

The company is expected to be worth $US1.5 billion to $US2 billion. 

AST is one of PEP's longest-held assets, acquiring it in May 2008. 

The company is a US stock transfer agent, and is te largest stock transfer agent in the US by number of corporate issuers. 

PEP had initially intended to combine AST with another of its former portfolio company's, Link Group. 

The idea was to combine Link and AST, two similar businesses on different sides of the Pacific. However, soon after PEP bought in, financial markets froze over and interest rates plummeted. AST made about half of its earnings in overnight money markets – and that dried up almost instantly. 

PEP has since floated Link, to much success, and is now focused on AST.

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The team behind the now-sold US-focused shale player Aurora Oil & Gas has finalised its IPO plans, lodging a prospectus to raise $30 million. 

The offer will see the shares price at 25¢ apiece.

As reported by Street Talk earlier this month, former Aurora chairman Jon Stewart, technical director Ian Lusted and finance director Graham Dowland are all involved in the latest venture, named Australis Oil & Gas.

Euroz Securities is lead manager for the IPO of 120 million shares in Australis, which will have about 341.6 million shares on issue and a market cap of $85.4 million. Bell Potter Securities is acting as co-lead manager.

Defying the lacklustre oil market, Stewart says the float managers have already received commitments for the full amount of stock, allowing the team to focus on building a high quality share register to join investors that have already put  $37 million into the company prior to the IPO.

Australis is focusing on exploration, appraisal and proven assets with potential upside and says it has already secured onshore assets in the US and Portugal that meet the criteria.

After taking Aurora from a $28 million junior when it listed on the ASX in 2005 through to its sale in 2014 for $2.6 billion including debt, the team have a lot to live up to.

But Stewart is pointing to "attractive" market conditions for the "countercyclical investment strategy," demonstrated in Australis.

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Vocus Communications is seeking to raise $650 million to buy Ontario Teachers Pension Plan and CIMIC Group's cables and data centre owner, NextGen Networks, as exclusively foreshadowed by Street Talk on Tuesday night.

Credit Suisse launched the deal on Wednesday. 

Vocus will pay $700 million for the NextGen acquisition with additional amounts for two extra projects. The total consideration announced by the company is $807 million.

Macquarie Capital is advising NextGen. 

Vocus outlined the $652 fully underwritten capital raising, via an entitlement offer and placement, on Wednesday after the stock entered a trading halt.

The company plans to raise $452 million in a 1-for-8.90 accelerated renounceable entitlement offer with retail rights trading and an institutional placement of about 26.5 million new shares which will amount to $200 million. The institutional offer closes on Thursday and will be followed by a bookbuild on Friday.

The offer price under the entitlement offer is $7.55 per share, a 10.4 per cent discount to the theoretical ex-rights price of $8.42. The stock last traded at $8.52.

As Street Talk revealed a fortnight ago, Vocus has been closing in on NextGen for months with Ontario Teachers seeking an exit. 

NextGen would give Vocus an inter-city fibre network that it does not already own. Vocus currently uses NextGen's inter-city infrastructure.

 

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Hastings Funds Management has increased its stake in New South Wales electricity transmission company TransGrid to above the $1 billion mark. 

Street Talk can reveal Hastings has bought an additional 2.5 per cent of TransGrid from Canada's Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec in a deal expected to be worth about $125 million. 

It's understood Hastings bought the stake on behalf of a new Asia-based client, which wrote its first-ever cheque for a specific Australian infrastructure asset. Hastings will manage the investment on the client's behalf.

The purchase means Hastings now accounts for 22.5 per cent of TransGrid's shareholder register and is the company's equal-largest shareholder, alongside CDPQ. 

The move comes only seven months after Hastings and CDPQ - along with their partners Spark Infrastructure, Kuwait's Wren House Infrastructure and Abu Dhabi's Tawreed Investments - paid $10.25 billion for NSW's power transmission company. 

The shareholders wrote equity cheques worth a combined $4.89 billion, and borrowed the rest from a large group of banks. 

The new owners have wasted no time in making changes to the company. They installed former Western Power boss Paul Italiano as the private TransGrid's inaugural chief executive officer and hired former Sydney Water Corporation boss and NSW government adviser Kerry Schott to chair the company's board. 

No doubt Schott and Italiano's first task is identifying efficiencies in the business, while they are also expected to be involved as TransGrid and its new owners' turn their attention towards Endeavour Energy.

NSW is seeking to sell a 50.4 per cent stake in Endeavour, which provides power to 1 million customers in the Sydney, the Blue Mountains, Illawarra and Southern Highlands regions. It has a $6 billion regulated asset base and the stake is expected to be worth up to $4.5 billion.

An auction will get underway in September and attract the similar line-up of infrastructure funds and financial investors who were bidding for TransGrid this time last year.

Endeavour's auction will launch once NSW Treasurer Gladys Berejiklian has finalised the sale of a stake in the state's largest distributor, Ausgrid.

State Grid Corporation of China and Cheung Kong Infrastructure are working on offers in time for the late July deadline, and will present their respective business plans to the government soon after. 

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First it was the ANZ sexism brouhaha that embroiled his top broker Angus Aitken, but lately veteran stockpicker Colin Bell has been getting plenty of phone calls about another "A": agriculture.

Street Talk understands Bell has been entertaining overtures from prospective buyers and also taking pitches from investment banks for the potential sale of some prime pastoral land in south-western NSW. It should be noted the green light for a formal auction of the Bell family-owned farms has not been given, sources said.

That said, timing is everything and given quality farming land is attracting substantial interest - just ask the shareholders in the Kidman pastoral interests - there is likely to be plenty of appetite.

The hedge fund heavy-hitter Ray Dalio, founder of Bridgewater Associates and a regular in the lists of the top 30 wealthiest people in the United States, is Colin Bell's silent partner in the lucrative portfolio which includes land that runs huge flocks of merino sheep under the trading name Burrabogie Pastoral Company and assets snaffled over the years from the Murdoch and Waterhouse families.

The holdings also include a Hereford cattle stud. Bell's Australian Food and Agriculture Company Ltd is the parent entity which has been investing in agriculture for more than four decades. Bell Financial Group's Alastair Provan has been front and centre along the way, too.

A sale could fetch between $400 million and $500 million, industry sources said.

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