Bank of America Merrill Lynch has made the first big move of the annual banker hiring/poaching season.

Street Talk can reveal the Wall Street giant has recruited one of Australia's most senior equity capital markets dealmakers - former Macquarie Capital operative Mark Warburton - as its new local head of ECM.

Warburton joins BAML after a 25-year career with Macquarie - where he was involved in floating big name companies like Seek and JB Hi-Fi and raising equity for the likes of Qantas Airways, Goodman Group and Caltex Australia.

Warburton retired from Macquarie in late 2017 at the age of 50. He formerly ran ECM for the Australian investment bank in Sydney and Hong Kong.

Warburton is expected to start at BAML next month.

His hire ends a search by BAML head of investment banking Joe Fayyad that has taken two very unexpected twists.

Former Deutsche Bank-er Michael Richardson as head of capital markets in mid 2017, but he resigned last year after being charged as part of the ANZ Banking Group cartel case. Fayyad then turned to ex UBS and Credit Suisse operative Simon Cox to run BAML's equity capital markets team. However Cox passed away in November.

In the meantime, the bank worked on the year's biggest IPO last year - fuel business Viva Energy - as joint global coordinator with Deutsche Bank.

The hire comes as BAML handed out its bonuses and promotions earlier this week. It is understood the biggest mover internally was former Credit Suisse banker Chris Gronow, who was promoted to a director and the firm's head of mergers and acquisitions.

The promotion capped a year of recruits for Fayyad. The hires included ex-Credit Suisse MD Dan Janes, former US-based natural resources banker Gordon Morrison and ex-Nomura banker Michael Evans, who heads the firm's financial institutions coverage.

It also comes as the bank's dealmakers advise Brookfield's private equity arm on its $5 billion-odd bid for Healthscope and assist Vodafone Australia with its proposed $15 billion merger with TPG Telecom.

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It is well known private equity-backed activewear retailer Lorna Jane is up for sale via KPMG's corporate finance team. 

But Street Talk understands there are preparations for a second and related sale process quietly bubbling along in the background.

This time it is one of the companies that makes Lorna Jane's tights, sports bras and the like - Active Apparel Group. 

It is understood Active Apparel Group has hired boutique adviser Oaktower Partnership to drum up potential buyer interest and prepare the company for sale, and has Ernst & Young's number crunchers running vendor due diligence.

The business is believed to make $10 million to $15 million a year at the earnings line, from the manufacture of activewear, swimwear and leisurewear, predominantly at its factory in China. 

It is expected to attract interest from private equity and strategic buyers, with existing manufacturing assets in China. The business has an Australian head office in Queensland, an office in the US and manufacturing facilities in China. 

Active Apparel Group is majority owned by directors Timothy Hennessy, Paul McCloskey and Daniel Hawker, according to documents filed with ASIC.

The holding company, AAG Holdings Pty Ltd, most recently lodged accounts with the corporate regulator for the year ended December 2016. The consolidated group had $51.2 million revenue, $28.8 million in assets and 1432 staff, the accounts said. 

It is understood the mooted sale has come to the attention of some of the tyrekickers around Lorna Jane - given Active Apparel's status as a key supplier to the Australian retailer. 

It remains to be seen how Lorna Jane's bidders will get comfortable with Active Apparel Group's potential change of control - although perhaps there is an angle in putting the two together to make a larger group. 

It comes as Lorna Jane's auction heats up. Sources said the company's owners and adviser KPMG were calling for first round bids last week and the field of buyers was made up of names from offshore. 

Interestingly L Catterton Asia is not in the field - contrary to unsubstantiated news reports. The bidders are believed to be mostly China and Hong Kong based, and keen to extrapolate Lorna Jane's potential growth in China angle. 

Lorna Jane is owned by Sydney-based buyout firm CHAMP Ventures, which is winding up its portfolio, and founders Lorna Jane and Bill Clarkson. 

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The first of last year's shelved sharemarket debutants is showing signs of life. 

Street Talk understands global solar investor Wirsol is dusting off plans to try and list its Australian portfolio, which is dubbed Bright Acre Energy and includes five solar farms spread across Victoria and Queensland. 

Sources said Wirsol had investment bank UBS on hand to re-start the initial public offering preparations, which could have it as the first chunky float contender in front of fund managers post the February reporting season. 

It's expected to be structured as a high-yield growth business, and comes after Wirsol scrapped plans to float the business last year. Instead, it had its bankers sound out potential trade buyers and talking to lending banks about a refinancing.

The refinancing was aimed at coming up with a corporate structure that would boost the company's distribution yield, according to fund managers who were sounded as part of the earlier marketing efforts. 

It'll be interesting to see what reaction the business gets should it make it to fund managers in coming months as planned. 

The first question funds will ask is what was the impact on RCR Tomlinson's downfall and retreat from the solar sector. RCR was the biggest solar farm developer with about $1 billion in solar revenue last financial year. 

There will also be some questions asked about its board and management team. 

The business has put some runs on the board since it was last in front of fund managers. The company opened its 25MW / 50MWh Gannawarra Energy Storage System (GESS), which is an integrated solar and battery storage facility, and started exporting into the electricity grid last October. 

It also announced that its Gannawarra Solar Farm (60MW) in north-west Victoria and Wemen Solar Farm (110MW) were providing power into the grid in November. 

The plan last time around was to fetch a $500 million-odd valuation on listing. It will be interesting to see whether that has also changed in the past six months. 

Bright Acre Energy chief executive Bill Calcraft, a former Australian rugby union player who led a €2 billion solar funds portfolio for Allianz Capital, made his first pitch to fund managers in August. 

It re-considers an ASX-listing at a time when there are a handful of substantial market debutants that pulled initial public offering plans last year in light of market conditions. Others include personal loans and credit cards business Latitude Financial Services and Commonwealth Bank's Colonial First State Global Asset Management, which was later sold to a Japanese buyer. 

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RBC Capital Markets has promoted two bankers to managing director level in its Australian investment banking team. 

It is understood infrastructure banker Kay Stuart and debt structuring adviser Philip McLaughlin were elevated to MD in the Canadian bank's annual bonus and promotions round just prior to Christmas.

MD is the highest rank for dealmakers at RBC Capital Markets. The two promotions takes RBC's local MD count to 10, which includes its various sector and product team heads and head of investment banking Sean Miller. RBC has about 45 bankers in its Australian team. 

Stuart's promotion came after about four years with the Canadian bank. The infrastructure specialist joined from RBS/CIMB, where she was in the infrastructure and utilities team, and previously worked at PwC. 

McLaughlin is a former RBS and Macquarie Capital banker who specialises in capital structuring. He spends most of his time arranging acquisition funding for new deals and refinancings for the firm's corporate clients. 

It comes as investment banks across the market go through their annual bonus and promotions rounds. Citi, Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs did bonuses last week, while Bank of America Merrill Lynch took its turn earlier this week. Deutsche Bank also announced four new MDs. 

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Broadband distruptor Uniti Wireless has overcome a challenging market for initial public offerings - and a tough time of year to grab investor attention. 

It is understood the company's IPO has passed the $12 million minimum, which means it will be headed to the ASX-boards as planned next month. 

Uniti Wireless is seeking to raise as much as $18 million in a deal valuing the company at up to $37.9 million. The offer is at 25¢ a share or around 14-times earnings, on an enterprise value-to-EBITDA basis. 

It's understood a handful of institutional investors have piled into the offer, keen to see whether Uniti's management team can make lightning strike twice. 

New Uniti chief executive Michael Simmons is well known in the market. He formerly worked at Soul Patts-backed SP Telemedia, which became TPG Telecom, and was a non-executive director at Vaughan Bowen's M2 Telecommunications.

​Uniti is chaired by Graeme Barclay - former group CEO of BAI Communications - and has some other tech sector royalty as backers, including Vocus founder James Spenceley and Amcom's Tony Grist. 

Uniti Wireless is a fixed wireless broadband provider that it seeking to offer an alternative solution to the NBN.

The company already offers rival services to the NBN in Adelaide and Melbourne, using its own infrastructure to provide fixed wireless services at comparable speed and price to the NBN.

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