AGL split founders | PEP, Carlyle weigh iNova sale | UBS tapped for Linkly

Good evening,

It’s all eyes on AGL Energy, as the company prepares to change tack on its future-defining demerger.

Despite having laid out a 352-page pitch as to why the demerger was in shareholders’ best interest, the deal’s expected to be deferred, or pulled altogether, as early as Monday morning.

While there were still plenty of moving parts in the AGL camp on Sunday - one source described it as “genuine chaos” - no one was disputing that the deal was off. Exactly why, though, is expected to be revealed this week.

Clearly, AGL was facing an uphill battle to get the vote past shareholders at the June 15 meeting. Grok’s 11.3 per cent would count for considerably more, with pundits tipping only a 60 per cent to 70 per cent turnout, at best.

That’s been the case for weeks, though. And AGL has consistently said it wants to go to the meeting, even if it is to face defeat.

So Street Talk isn’t ruling out a fresh twist. There are a lot of reputations on the line.

And if the demerger is off, then CEO Graeme Hunt and chairman Peter Botten’s jobs will be on the line. That’s another thing no one was disputing on Sunday.

Amid the chaos, Street Talk picked out a handful of deal-related scoops on Sunday.

PEP and Carlyle have called in bankers to run sale talks for iNova Pharmaceuticals, while UBS has been mandated on payments group Linkly.

And we have JPMorgan’s pitch for Ixom, which looks eerily like how the business was shopped four years ago.

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