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Australia’s largest property listings firm REA Group, majority owned by Rupert Murdoch’s Information Corp, is contemplating a money and shares supply for its £4.4bn-valued UK peer Rightmove, because it goals to develop into the most important on-line actual property enterprise throughout each markets.
REA, one among Australia’s largest listed firms, stated it noticed “clear similarities” between the 2 companies and a possible acquisition as a “transformational alternative”.
It has but to make an method, however the firm revealed it was contemplating the transfer after studies that it was working with Deutsche Financial institution on a big abroad acquisition. Rightmove had a market worth of £4.36bn at Friday’s shut in London.
REA has till the top of September to formally make a proposal or stroll away beneath UK takeover legal guidelines now that it has publicly expressed its curiosity. The corporate’s inventory worth has elevated by 25 per cent prior to now yr, with the power of the Australian housing market boosting revenue progress.
Shares in REA dropped 7 per cent after it revealed the potential UK enlargement, which is more likely to contain an fairness elevating given the deal’s dimension.
In a observe, stockbroker Angus Aitken described Owen Wilson, a former funding banker appointed REA chief govt in 2018, as a “wise” govt trying to make a “frequent sense” acquisition.
“Ultimately, the worst M&A is ego-driven,” he wrote. “There isn’t a ego right here in our view, that is all about long-term financial returns.”
REA was based within the mid-Nineties in a storage within the Melbourne suburb of Doncaster and briefly grew to become a inventory market darling in the course of the dotcom bubble after it floated on the Australian Securities Alternate in 1999.
Its shares then crashed and Information Corp purchased a 44 per cent stake in 2001 for about A$2mn, in what has been described as one among Lachlan Murdoch’s smartest strikes. Information Corp elevated its stake to 62 per cent in 2005 after it tried to purchase out REA for A$120mn however was rebuffed. The corporate is now price A$26bn (US$17.6bn).
The activist investor Starboard Worth final yr put strain on Information Corp to separate its property companies — together with the REA stake — from the broader media enterprise in an effort to unlock worth.
REA has operations in India and a 20 per cent stake in Transfer Inc — the US on-line listings firm additionally managed by Information Corp — but it surely has additionally stop some worldwide markets.
It constructed a European on-line listings enterprise that was offered to the UK’s Oakley Capital Non-public Fairness in 2016. Final month, it offered its minority stake in south-east Asian actual property listings firm PropertyGuru after it was offered to Swedish investor EQT.
