Icon auction ready to start; Top earnings season picks; HealthCo float; Nico.Lab

Good evening,

Ready, set ... go! Goldman Sachs and Jefferies are putting the finishing touches on an investment memorandum and process letter for private cancer-care provider Icon Group, after months of talk about an auction.

Interested parties – of which there are expected to be a few – will be told to submit first-round offers in late August.

Names understood to be interested include trans-Tasman investor Morrison & Co, rival manager QIC Ltd and Healthscope owner Brookfield. Sources also suggest Canadian heavyweight Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan is in the mix, along with Swedish giant EQT.

It’s going to be a hot one.

Elsewhere, Citi reveals its top picks ahead of earnings season; David Di Pilla’s HomeCo, flanked by a huge broker syndicate, is set to launch the second biggest float of the year for HealthCo; local funds have piled into an Amsterdam-based stroke diagnostic company called Nico.Lab in a pre-IPO raise and you have to wonder why it’s taking so long for Australian Pharmaceutical Industries to consider Wesfarmers’ offer.

Happy reading,
Anthony Macdonald and Yolanda Redrup
Street Talk Editors