Good evening,

Australia’s small-cap financial services sector is starting to resemble a schoolyard scrum: full of small players with overlapping interests and tangled shareholder registers. Could a wave of consolidation be about to break?

Meet the key players: advice platform for dealer groups Centrepoint Alliance (CAF), accounting, business advisory and financial planning business Count Limited and broking, leasing and lending businesses COG Financial Services.

To recap, COG Financial Services picked up a 20 per cent stake in Centrepoint Alliance from ASX-listed life insurer ClearView at 33¢ per share in November 2023. However, sources said COG is not a natural holder of the CAF stake, flagging to investors in November that it was “undertaking a capital review with a view to potentially realising some non-core assets”.

CAF and Count are small-cap advice businesses trading with market capitalisations between $70 million and $135 million. Well-placed sources said Count, which is keen on buying more dealer groups, is a logical buyer of COG’s 20 per cent stake in CAF, which it could parlay into a potential takeover.

Read the full story tomorrow and more on the Street Talk page.

• Ring, ring! It’s Helloworld Travel calling for Webjet chair
• Stonepeak-backed Ampyr hunts investor for NSW’s 400MW Wellington battery
• KKR poaches dealmakers from Blackstone, Affinity
• Sydney’s Phocas Software returns home in search of $500 million payday
• IAG wins auction for Royal Automobile Club WA with $1.35 billion bid
• Aspen Group launches $70 million capital raising
• Rinehart-backed gas explorer Lakes Blue Energy launches capital raise

• How $2.3 billion worth of deals could entrench another Australian duopoly
• Chemist Warehouse scion cashes out $380 million
• Is anyone betting against Macquarie? Here’s what we found

Renewables developer Ampyr Energy Global wants a deep-pocketed investor for its 400MW Wellington battery-energy storage system in the NSW, three months after buying out British oil and gas juggernaut Shell’s 50 per cent stake in the project.

The Australian sharemarket tracked modest gains on Wall Street, buoyed by a rally in technology stocks and banks that pushed Commonwealth Bank to a fresh record high.

Click here for the latest equity market wrap.