Good evening,

You have to give credit where credit is due.

Goldman Sachs and Macquarie’s equities desk have snaffled this year’s biggest block trade, with a $1.14 billion bid for a 15 per cent stake in IDP Education.

The deal went through late on Wednesday, after the block was well flagged and hotly contested.

But the real winners are Education Australia and its 38 university shareholders. When the unis took control of what was an English-language testing business in south-east Asia in 1996, we’re sure they didn’t envisage the business fetching such a high price 25 years later.

Elsewhere, NSW’s State Super has joined Canadian Brookfield in selling its GeelongPort stake, the investment memorandum is out for Intellihub and Pacific Equity Partners is selling a 50 per cent stake; Axicom has dropped out of the race to buy a stake in Singtel’s Australian mobile telecommunications towers; and ezyCollect has added Bombora to its capital table in a pre-IPO capital raise.

Happy reading,

Anthony Macdonald and Yolanda Redrup
Street Talk Editors