Douglass drops two-thirds of his Magellan shares; Shaw and Partners circles Perpetual Private; Founder vs new brigade at Pacific Smiles

Good evening,

Australia’s funds management sector has gone bananas.

Only a few days after Regal Partners made an audacious bid for Perpetual (an unfathomable event only a few months ago), Hamish Douglass has sold two thirds of his stake in Magellan Financial Group.

Douglass sold the shares for $118.3 million in a block trade on Monday night, as we revealed.

It was a tight 5.5 per cent discount to the Monday close, but the $9.10 sale price was still a mile away from where Magellan shares were trading 12 months ago ($30) or two years ago ($50).

It also came 11 months after Douglass called it “absurd” that he would dump his stake, and after he and his former wife “had no intention of selling any of our shares” despite their separation.

Obviously, a lot can change in the space of a year, and a lot has at Magellan. Douglass is now gone as chairman and CIO, and is no longer a substantial investor. Some of his investment team stalwarts are also gone, while the firm’s managing less than half what it did this time last year. Wow.

Anyway, elsewhere in Street Talk we look at who’s hanging around the hoop for Perpetual Private (should there be a corporate carve-up) and delve into the boardroom battle at dental group Pacific Smiles.

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