Australia's largest recruiter for nurses and doctors, Healthcare Australia, is being prepared for sale.  

Street Talk can reveal KordaMentha's M&A advisory arm, 333 Capital, has been hired to find a buyer for the business, with an auction to get underway early next year. 

Healthcare Australia, which specialises in nursing and doctor placements but also recruits support and allied health workers, makes between $15 million and $20 million in earnings.

It is expected to fetch more than $150 million, based on recent transaction multiples for similar assets, with the field of buyers to be led by overseas players and private equity firms.

Healthcare Australia's owners, global alternative asset manager Ares Management and London-based private equity firm Toscafund Asset Management, will be hoping the white-hot labour market and demand for quality healthcare assets translates into a good price.

Logical acquirers include Dutch giant Randstad and Switzerland's Adecco. Japanese human resources company, Recruit Holdings, which acquired local rival Chandler Macleod in 2015, would also likely take a look. 

Healthcare Australia is also no stranger to private equity ownership. The company was sold by CHAMP Private Equity to London-listed Healthcare Locums in late 2010, after which Ares and Toscafund bought out and privatised Healthcare Locums.

The slated auction comes as listed labour hire firm Programmed Maintenance is under a $778 million takeover offer from Japan's Persol, and amid a flurry of consolidation in the Australian services industry, with Downer EDI trying to secure full control of Spotless.

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Evolution Mining is entertaining interest in its unloved Edna May gold mine.

Sources told Street Talk Australia's second-largest gold producer has been approached by a number of potential buyers of the West Australian asset, which Evolution has held since the company's formation in 2011.

While Evolution has not kicked off a formal sale process, it is understood due diligence materials have been provided to interested parties.

Analysts say Edna May could sell for about $100 million and would at least net more than the $50 million the miner pocketed for the sale of its Pajingo gold mine to China's Minjar Gold in September last year.

Minjar could again be an obvious buyer for Edna May.

Since scooping up Pajingo, Minjar has continued to demonstrate a keen appetite for Australian gold.

Shandong Tianye Group, a private company associated with Minjar's parent company, Shandong Tyan Home, acquired Hanking Australia's Southern Cross Gold Operations in February for $330 million.

Edna May is not far from the Southern Cross operations, which sit on the other side of the town by the same name.

The talks with prospective acquirers of Edna May are not unexpected. 

Evolution has long promoted its portfolio optimisation mantra, declaring it is willing to sell assets to improve the overall quality of its portfolio.

Portfolio quality has improved in recent years with the acquisitions of the Cowal and Ernest Henry mines and the high-cost Edna May has been exposed by analysts as being a drag on the company's results.

Evolution recently installed new management at the mine to lead a turnaround as it transitions into an underground operation this financial year. But it remains the company's highest cost mine and the only mine in its portfolio that has not been cash positive in recent quarters.

The mine's EBITDA margin for the first half of fiscal 2017 was 17 per cent, compared to the 54 per cent average across its six other assets.

It was forecast to produce 80,000 to 85,000 ounces of gold in the 2017 financial year at an all-in sustaining cost of $1140 to $1220 an ounce.

Evolution will confirm whether it met this guidance when it releases its June quarter results on Thursday.

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Alternative asset manager Apollo Global Management is the latest bidder believed to be seeking a stake in Engie and Mitsui & Co's $1 billion-odd Victorian power station Loy Yang B. 

Street Talk understands the $US200 billion asset manager is a key part of New South Wales-based Delta Electricity's consortium, as it works up a bid in time for the auction's August 29 deadline. 

Apollo is understood to be studying a deal where it would take a significant stake in Delta's most valuable asset, NSW power station Vales Point, and help fund the mooted $1 billion-odd acquisition of Loy Yang B with an equity and debt package.

It means a two-way diligence process for Apollo, with it running the numbers on both Delta's Vales Point and the up-for-sale coal fired generator Loy Yang B. 

Delta chairman Trevor St Baker and director Brian Flannery picked up the ageing Vales Point for a miserly $1 million in 2015, at a time when Vales Point had been amassing  large losses, most utility investors had strong doubts about the future of coal-fired electricity generation and the NSW government was happy to have the power plant off its books. 

Then NSW Treasurer Gladys Berejiklian, said Vales Point's sale would return $130 million in cash held in the company to the government and save the state tens of millions of dollars in decommissioning costs.

Clearly times have changed, as seen by the interest in Engie and Mitsui's Loy Yang B. 

Delta's consortium, advised by Goldman Sachs, is up against bids from private equity giant Blackstone and Alinta Energy along with its new owner Chow Tai Fook, advised by Lazard.  

Interestingly, it is understood Blackstone's dealmakers have been lining up a big debt package to support its bid, which is believed to be spearheaded by Nomura and ANZ Banking Group, among other lenders. Blackstone's financiers are expected to double as advisers, should the bid progress. 

Rothschild is running the auction. 

Loy Yang B is expected to fetch about $1 billion, although some say up to $1.5 billion could be warranted depending on your view of electricity prices over the medium to longer term. Certainly the wholesale prices in recent months are backing a bullish outlook, with few experts expecting much moderation over the next few months.

Loy Yang B, which generates about 10 per cent of Victoria's power, is 30 per cent owned by Japan's Mitsui & Co. which is working with Paris-listed Engie for a 100 per cent sale. The asset is has been pitched as a strong cash flow-generating business with a life still of about 30 years.

 

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Here's one for the organic food enthusiasts. 

Fast-growing wholefoods and organics retailer About Life, which has seven stores in well-heeled Sydney suburbs and another in Melbourne's fashionable Port Melbourne, has courted interest from a potential suitor north of the NSW border. 

Street Talk understands Queensland-based The Natural Grocery Company had its sights set on About Life, seeking to put the two footprints together, cash in on their mutual suppliers and extract available synergies. 

While both sides saw strategic merit to such a deal, it is understood About Life has had to pull back from negotiations. All talks with The Natural Grocery Company, and indeed any potential suitor, are said to be on hold while About Life works its way through a legal dispute with grocery giant Woolworths, irons out some operational challenges and digests a recent expansion plan. 

The legal dispute involves About Life's mooted divestment of its Double Bay store to Harris Farm Markets to raise some capital. This has caught the ire of Woolies, which has imposed an injunction on the sale. 

You have to wonder whether About Life could be on deal sheets in another 12 months or so, once it has addressed the current issues. Harris Farm and David Jones are two parties expected to be interested. 

About Life is majority-owned by sisters Jodie Stewart and Tammie Phillips, who have about a 30 per cent stake in the company. Chief executive Mike Green is also a shareholder. 

 

 

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Commonwealth Bank of Australia put Ten Network into receivership with a $98 million debt but the Aussie bank is far from the media company's biggest creditor. 

That mantle falls to United States media giant CBS, whose local arm CBS International Television Australia Pty Ltd has put in a claim for a whopping $795.5 million. 

CBS's claim is more than twice as much as all of Ten's other creditors put together, almost 15 times its equity value when the stock last traded, and represents the sum of all of Ten's future payments to CBS over the next five years under a content agreement.

With that sort of number on the horizon, it is easy to see why Ten's board was trying to cut a deal with CBS prior to putting the company into administration.

Interestingly, CBS was also sympathetic to a deal and even sought to take equity in Ten in return for a big reduction in the long-term content contract. 

However, a deal was not done and the rest is history. Ten's receiver PPB Advisory is now working with Moelis & Co to recapitalise or sell the company. 

CBS's massive claim comes despite the US company only being owed less than $5 million when Ten's directors called in administrator KordaMentha. 

Ten's next biggest creditors include CBA, Cricket Australia and loan guarantors Consolidated Press Holdings, Lachlan Murdoch's Illyria and Bruce Gordon's Birketu. Others include production companies Fremantle Media, Endemol Shine and Have You Been Paying Attention? Pty Ltd. 

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