Australian equipment hire company Coates Hire, owned by private equity firm Carlyle Group and Seven Group Holdings, is considering an IPO to raise up to A$800 million ($821 million) to help repay debts, sources said.
Coates has hired Bank of America-Merrill Lynch, Deutsche Bank, JP Morgan and Macquarie Group to look at fund-raising options, including an initial public offering, five sources with direct knowledge said, without specifying a time frame. They declined to be identified as the information was confidential.
Carlyle, which bought a 46 percent stake in Coates in 2008, is among a number of private equity funds in the Asia-Pacific that have held talks to refinance debt as frozen IPO markets and a lack of strategic buyers leave the funds holding assets longer than the usual three to five years.
Coates is refinancing around A$1.9 billion ($1.95 billion) in debt and expects to complete the process by the end of August, the equipment hire company said in a statement on its website on Thursday, adding that it has no current plans to sell shares to the public.
"As is always the case, we continue to review various means of funding the continued strong growth of the Coates Hire business," Coates Finance Director James Welch said in the statement.
Coates Hire's debt is not due until 2014, but the U.S. fund has started refinancing talks early because many banks from the original lender group are either no longer in business or not lending to leveraged deals in Australia.
The 2008 lenders included ABN AMRO Bank, Allied Irish Banks , Aozora Bank, Bank of Ireland, Landsbanki Luxembourg and WestLB, according to Thomson Reuters LPC data.
Carlyle and Seven, which also owns 46 percent of Coates, plus management, were seeking to raise between A$700 million and A$800 million from an IPO, two of the sources said.
A separate source said the major shareholders did not plan to exit Coates but wanted to reduce debt and fund growth. An IPO was one of several options but would be six months or so away, the source added.
Carlyle, Macquarie, JP Morgan, Deutsche and Merrill declined to comment, while Seven could not be immediately reached.
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