Another day, another sell-side analyst jumping ship.

Street Talk can reveal fund manager Investors Mutual has lured Credit Suisse equities analyst Lucas Goode.

Goode spent almost seven years at the Swiss bank, initially working in the media and telecommunications team under Fraser McLeish. [Interestingly, McLeish has also taken his leave from Credit Suisse].

Goode 's focus shifted to small caps in November 2016, where he was the lead analyst on education and TMT stocks .

Prior to that, he had a stint at PwC Australia in corporate finance. 

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APN Outdoor has raised its bid for Here, There & Everywhere's out-of-home advertising business Adshel to $540 million, Street Talk can reveal.

The revised proposal is $40 million higher than APN Outdoor's initial tilt back in May. It will be announced to the market at 9am Sydney time.

The offer consists of $230 million in cash and APN Outdoor scrip of $310 million which would be distributed to HT&E shareholders. It is understood APN Outdoor and its advisers reckon the cost synergies of combing the two businesses will be north of $15 million, helping to underpin the new bid.

It comes as APN Outdoor's board prepares to reject a $1.1 billion spoiler approach from JCDecaux after shareholders said the French giant would need to pay more to secure its sector rival.

Late on Wednesday, JCDecaux submitted an indicative non-binding proposal to acquire 100 per cent of APN Outdoor at $6.52 per share, or an 11 per cent premium to Wednesday's closing price of $5.85.

Taking its new Adshel proposal live means APN Outdoor can discuss its merits directly with its shareholders whilst fending off JCDecaux's advances.

However, it also means APN's biggest rival oOh!media, which has submitted a $470 million non-binding proposal for Adshel to HT&E, knows what it has to beat.

The Brendon Cook-led company is expected to tip in an all-cash offer for Adshel by the 5pm deadline on Friday.

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Blackstone's $508 million deal to buy the 113 crash repair outlets owned by ASX-listed AMA Group looks to have become Australian Tax Office road kill. 

Street Talk understands the mooted transaction has been hit by a groundbreaking negative ruling by the ATO refusing the parties demerger relief.

Blackstone announced in April it would buy AMA's crash repair business in a complex demerger that would also result in the remaining parts of the AMA Group businesses continuing to trade in a separate listed vehicle on the ASX.

As this column reported on Thursday, to ensure that the deal stacked up on a financial basis Blackstone required the ATO to provide a ruling granting capital gains tax demerger relief. 

But five months on from the overtures originally being made, concerns were starting to mount that ATO wasn't going to play ball.

Sources said that while the ATO had expressed issues with the deal verbally, it was hoped subsequent discussions with AMA and tax adviser PwC had proved fruitful. 

But Blackstone's hopes have been dashed and it is understood advisers on both sides of the deal are furious. 

Sources said tax experts view the ATO's knock-back as an extraordinary reversal of practice and interpretation by the ATO, given how common demerger relief has become. 

It is understood that hopes had been pinned on a similar case from 2013, where a company called Texon Petroleum announced a merger with Sundance Energy, which included as a pre-condition the demerger of a subsidiary company. 

In that case, the ATO ruled positively. Those in-and-around the Blackstone/AMA transaction are baffled as to why it didn't receive the same treatment 

An announcement is expected to be made by AMA on Friday morning.
 

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Local fund managers are expected to be courted next week by one of the country's richest families as it prepares to list its farming properties in a $285 million real estate investment trust.

Sources told Street Talk Liza Whitmore, CEO of the Costa Family Office and Kidder Williams boss David Williams were in Hong Kong this week meeting fund managers to drum up support for the REIT, which will comprise the Costa family farms that supply ASX-listed Costa Group with raspberries, blueberries, blackberries, mandarins and oranges.

Feedback from fund managers suggests the farms are valued at $285 million with a yield of 8 per cent. 

Investors have been told a product disclosure statement will be lodged before the end of next week.

Costa Asset Management, chaired by Robert Costa, appointed adviser Kidder Williams last year to test the market for a sale of about 14 properties including those operated and leased by Costa Group. At the time the properties were expected to fetch about $300 million. 

Street Talk revealed last year Costa Asset Management was pursuing a REIT, with Bell Potter working with the group to weigh a transaction.

The properties leased to Costa Group include blueberry and raspberry farms in the coastal northern New South Wales town of Corindi; blueberries in Tumbarumba, blueberries, raspberries and blackberries near Devonport, northern Tasmania; and citrus in the Riverland region of South Australia.

The leases for the Costa Asset Management farms expire in 2026, with options to renew.  

In addition to its berry and citrus farms, Costa Asset Management also invests in residential property developments and other investments including Geelong's Idyll Wine Co. 

With the performance of REITs linked to movements in bond yield, fund managers will also want to keep on top of any market swings, ahead of deciding whether to invest in the Costa vehicle. 

Meanwhile, the listed Costa is said to be continuing to scour produce markets for acquisitions. 

Sources told this column preliminary conversations were recently held between Costa and Sydney-based produce group MorCo Fresh, which valued the latter at $50 million to $100 million. 

Street Talk is not suggesting a formal bid was tabled or that discussions continued.

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For 3½ years, Melbourne boutique hedge fund L1 Capital had delivered incredible performance that put it among the top fund managers on the planet.

Then it raised $1.35 billion from retail punters and its numbers went south in spectacular fashion. L1 told investors the fund was 4.1 per cent lower in May - only seven weeks after listing - and with daily numbers being posted on the wholesale version of the fund, investors are already down a further 5 per cent in June.

That's led to all sorts of industry scuttlebutt about whether L1 raised more money they could handle, and whether the additional funds are the reason for the sharp drop-off in performance.

But word from the L1 camp, led by founders and co-chief investment officers Mark Landau and Rafi Lamm, is that nothing has changed – not the portfolio, not the process, nor the motivation. The draw downs are unrelated to the retail raising and since the fund gave back $600 million to wholesale investors, it therefore only added $700 million to its capacity.

Rather, the message is that L1 is one of several self professed 'contrarian' 'value focused' managers that have been caught in a momentum melt-up. That is, stocks that have run hard have run even harder, decimating the short sellers.

For example Elon Musk's Tesla, which is the most shorted stock in the United States, is up almost 30 per cent in June alone. The stock's trading volumes are three times that of the ASX. In the last two weeks, the 200 most shorted US stocks have gained 5.4 per cent versus 1.8 per cent for the S&P500.  

If you're short stocks that by all accounts appear insanely expensive and long relatively under-appreciated companies, you are getting hosed.  And that's what appears to be happening to L1. And at the worst possible time, just after they raised all that mom and dad money but also running into financial year end when performance fees are calculated.

Markets had indeed been kind to L1 which allowed them to build an impressive track record and raise substantial sums of permanent capital. For that reason they have come under particular scrutiny. But they're by no means the only Australian hedge fund to come under pressure. Crowd favourite Antipodes Partners - which is short Tesla - posted a 3.2 per cent loss in May although it's tracking better this month.

L1 and hedge funds around the world on the wrong side of the momentum trade will be hoping that when it ends, the gains will be equally spectacular.

Whether L1's new retail investor base has the patience remains to be seen.

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