Ever-acquisitive Macquarie strikes again

April 19, 2007

FINANCIAL TIMES

Barely is the ink dry on deals of recent days when Macquarie, the shopaholic Australian investment bank, is back on the circuit. Macquarie Infrastructure, the bank’s key infrastructure investment arm, said on Thursday it would buy Mercury Air Centers for $456.2m to create the largest fixed base operations network in the US, reports Reuters.

Mercury operates a network of 24 fixed base operations at 22 US airports and is majority owned by Allied Capital Corp. Macquarie said the transaction is expected to close during the third quarter.

The deal comes a day after two other Macquarie-managed investment funds announced they had agreed to buy Airwave, the telecoms network used by the UK emergency services, for $3.8bn (£1.9bn). Airwave is currently owned by 02, the UK-based mobile phone operator that is a subsidiary of Telefónica of Spain.

As if that wasn’t enough, Macquarie CountryWide Trust, a Macquarie-managed real estate investment trust, agreed earlier this week to buy shopping centers and malls in Germany and Poland for 351m euros ($477m) in its first foray into Europe.

The purchases will be funded by debt, and about A$160m ($134m) in stock sales to institutional and existing investors, reported Bloomberg. The deal includes five malls in Poland and two in Germany.

The acquisition is the first major transaction for the investment trust’s chief executive officer Stephen Sewell, who took over in September.

Shares of Macquarie CountryWide have gained 4.3 per cent this year, beating a 1.7 per cent rise in Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 Property Trust Index.

Amids working on debt issues, stock sales and other nifty schemes to pay for their acquisitions, CountryWide and other investment trusts and funds in the Macquarie stable are undoubtedly already eyeing the next deals.

As they say Down Under, watch this space…