Plenary into VicRoads auction; Quadrant ’s new fund; Spark consortium eyes Ausgrid

Good evening,

Plenary Group has entered the fray for VicRoads.

The public infrastructure investor is set to bid for the right to run motor vehicle registration, licensing and custom plates in Victoria, as part of an auction being run by Morgan Stanley.

The group already has experience doing similar work for governments. The Australian investor has a 10-year contract to conduct knowledge tests, vision tests and other road tests across 13 licence categories in Canada, for the Ministry of Transportation of Ontario.

But it’s facing off against the likes of Macquarie Group’s MIRA and Aware Super, as well as the transTasman infrastructure investor Morrison & Co, all of whom have plenty of experience running land titles offices.

Elsewhere, PE buyout firm Quadrant has raised $530 million for a second growth fund; Spark’s bidders are teaming up to try to snag a 16.8 per cent stake in NSW poles and wires company Ausgrid; Andrew Forrest’s Minderoo has placed an early-stage bet on CAR-T player Carina Biotech; and Canaccord is understood to be shopping around a stake in Laurence Escalante’s privately held gaming company VGW Holdings.

Happy reading,

Anthony Macdonald and Yolanda Redrup
Street Talk Editors