Wheels & Deals

 Comment

Going it alone

Michael Feller

Published 4:48 PM, 9 Jan 2009


MDS Financial Group, which provides online broking services, may no longer need the services of its corporate advisors BoxRED and Matilda Partners.

On October 31, the boutique firms were appointed as lead managers in a $2 million capital raising, by way of an issue of up to 50 million new shares. A tough market has, however, made that raising difficult, but MDS has announced that it has received expressions of strong interest from a number of parties it has established relationships with. The company says it is presently considering under what terms to negotiate with these parties and will update the market in due course.

The plus side of this presumably is that fewer, if any, advisory fees will need to be paid. In that vein, MDS said in the same announcement that a number of short-term and long-term cost controls had been identified.

This, of course, may not be good news to the M&A firms.

BoxRED, which is majority-owned by the pastoralist Merkin family, provides advisory services ranging from web design to corporate transactions and restructuring. Based on the Sunshine Coast, BoxRED was part of the team advising on the IPO of coal seam gas firm WestSide Corporation's IPO, and before that advised on a number of IT transactions.

Matilda Partners, based in Potts Point, is another small boutique that specialises in corporate advice to the media industry. Matilda’s principal Alex Hartman has previously provided services to Telstra, the Commonwealth Bank, Biometrics, Gresham and others.




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