PERTH: Australia’s Nine Entertainment, majority-owned by United States hedge funds, Apollo Global and Oaktree Capital, has appointed UBS, Morgan Stanley and Macquarie Group to manage an initial public offering, the Australian Financial Review said on Sunday.
Reuters reported that the national television broadcaster was considering selling between A$500m ($459m) and A$1bn worth of shares in the float that was expected to value the company at close to A$3bn, the newspaper reported, without saying where it got the information.
Oaktree and Apollo, former creditors of the media group, took a 95.5 per cent stake in Nine in January under a $3.6bn recapitalisation scheme to save the broadcaster from sliding into receivership and slash its debt load.
Private equity firm CVC Capital Partners retained just one per cent, losing nearly all of its A$1.8bn investment, the biggest loss on a single private-equity deal in Asia.
The prospective float, expected either late this year or in early 2014, would come around three years after CVC met with fund managers about a potential A$5bn-plus IPO.