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It’s a battle of buyout titans for TPG’s $4 billion Novotech sale process.

Street Talk can reveal Mike Murphy-led Bain Capital is competing with New York’s Kohlberg & Company, a buyout firm founded in 1987 by Jerome Kohlberg jnr and James Kohlberg and which last year acquired Worldwide Clinical Trials, a global, full-service contract research organisation.

As the column has noted, Murphy has the full support from Bain’s top brass in Boston headquarters, not least because of the firm’s track record in investing in similar business to Novotech, such as Quintiles, now NYSE-listed IQVIA.

But its rival, Kohlberg, signed a big-ticket CRO deal just over a year ago, when it agreed terms to acquire a stake in North Carolina-based Worldwide Clinical Trials from mid-market PE firm TJC in August 2023.

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Neoen and its advisers at Bank of America are taking David Di Pilla’s $4.2 billion sharemarket darling HMC Capital through the final stage of the French renewables player’s sale process for its Victorian portfolio, which soon-to-be owner Brookfield put on the auction block to attain ACCC approvals for its $10 billion acquisition of Neoen.

Australian shares closed at their lowest level in seven weeks on Friday, tracking a broad sell-off on Wall Street, with banks leading the losses after Macquarie Group’s earnings disappointed investors.

Click here for the latest equity market wrap.