Good evening,

As the dust settled on AustralianSuper and Singtel’s Axicom auction victory at the weekend, we started thinking more about what made it successful.

AusSuper’s incredibly hard to beat in Australian infrastructure auctions. It’s big ($260 billion in retirement savings), has patient enough capital to bid with conviction, and has bought enough unlisted infrastructure assets to trust its internal dealmakers and processes.

And because it’s big, it can write big cheques.

We went back through the Axicom bid and proposed capital structure, and reckon AusSuper’s putting nearly $2 billion to work.

That’s on top of another $1 billion or so to buy into Australian Tower Network last year.

Interestingly, each of the big four Australian banks also helped bankroll AusSuper’s bid.

In Street Talk tonight, we also look at who’s lining up for the next telco towers auction, and reveal some internal movement at stockbroker Wilsons.

And the PE musical chairs claimed another scalp at the weekend, with The Carlyle Group’s local No.2 joining EQT.

Happy reading,
Anthony Macdonald, Sarah Thompson and Kanika Sood
Street Talk editors