Phil King’s Regal Partners has made a scrip-based bid for Platinum Asset Management, which would almost double its funds under management to $29 billion.
King’s Regal Partners, which has offered 0.274 of its shares for every Platinum share, has been patiently stalking the latter for two years. It was in 2022, when King first flagged Regal’s interest in Platinum, declaring the funds management group was ripe for takeover because of its poor performance. Back then, he said: “It’s been a big dog for a long period of time.”
In 2022, Phil King, co-founder of Regal Partners, was critical of Platinum’s performance: “It’s been a big dog for a long period of time,” he said.Credit: Dion Georgopoulos
Since then, Regal Partners, which was co-founded by King, has led consolidation in the funds management and alternative investment sectors, doing a handful of deals that have included acquiring Paul Moore’s PM Capital, private credit group Merricks Capital, and stakes in Taurus Funds Management and agricultural private investment manager, Argyle Group.
Presiding over that consolidation has also been Regal’s chair, Mike Cole, who spent almost 13 years as Platinum’s chairman, before joining Regal in 2020. Cole knows Platinum’s co-founder Kerr Neilson well, as the two also worked together at Bankers Trust before Platinum.
Cole is an experienced hand at consolidating funds management businesses. In 2014, he was the chair that presided over the merger of the NSW government funds management activities, pulling together State Super, and funds of NSW Treasury Corporation, and the old NSW Work Cover.
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However, the kingmaker in the Regal bid for Platinum will be Neilson, who owns 21.5 per cent of the asset manager. In 2022, Neilson quit Platinum’s board in frustration, stating it wasn’t heeding the changes he thought were required to stem Platinum’s decline.
In early 2023, he effectively put his Platinum stake up for sale. But after some of the changes he agitated for were made at Platinum, Neilson did an about-face. His stake was no longer for sale, and in April this year, Neilson told this masthead he wasn’t interested in Platinum being merged with another group, where the outcome was “just to smash companies together and take out costs”.
But things can always change again, especially when Regal’s bid includes a sweetener that allows Platinum shareholders to be paid a fully franked special dividend – from its own cash reserves – of 24¢ per Platinum share. Neilson did not respond to calls to comment on the bid, nor did Platinum co-founder Andrew Clifford, who is the asset manager’s co-chief investment officer. King also did not respond to interview requests, and Cole was not taking calls.