Eight months of struggle pay off for Melbourne corporate fixer
Stephen McMahon
15 April 2006
The Age

Toll's takeover victory marks another success for Melbourne company adviser John Wylie. Stephen McMahon reports.

MELBOURNE'S corporate fixer John Wylie has once again proved his matchmaking skills by stitching together Toll's $5.8 billion takeover of Patrick, a deal many thought would never happen.

The animosity between the central figures on both sides has made the past eight months a roller-coaster ride of bids, counter-bids and legal skirmishes for Wylie and his high-flying investment firm Carnegie Wylie & Co as they tried to get Toll's bid over the finishing line.

"The deal is good for our client and their shareholders and obviously for our business," Wylie told The Age.

The boutique merchant bank's fees for advising Toll in the takeover are expected to be below the $20 million it earned from the $1.4 billion amputation of the Myer department store from parent group Coles Myer last month. Toll has indicated its advisory fees for lawyers, accountants and Carnegie Wylie totalled about $20 million. No breakdown of the payments is available.

The two assignments followed Carnegie Wylie's involvement last year in the $9.2 billion purchase of WMC Resources by BHP Billiton and its role in helping Pacific Hydro decide between two rival buyers as well as advising the Federal Government on the $6 billion naval contract that went to Adelaide-based group ASC (formerly known as Australian Submarine Corporation).

So it has been an extremely lucrative period for Carnegie Wylie, which straddles the country's two big cities. The Sydney-based Mark Carnegie has overall control of the firm's private equity operation while Wylie looks after the Melbourne arm. The two of them met while studying at Oxford University in 1983.

Before joining forces in 2000, they had risen to become among the best connected and trusted advisers in the Australian market. Wylie was head of investment banking at Credit Suisse First Boston for five years while Carnegie was a principal consultant for San Francisco-based private equity group Hellman & Friedman in Australia and South-East Asia for almost a decade.

They originally planned to call the company Isis Capital, after the Isis Lock in Oxford that links the town's canals with the Thames. But in a quirk of fate the name was registered only days before by a dotcom, Isis Communications.

In his position as chairman of the Melbourne Cricket Ground Trust, Wylie was centrally involved in the ground's redevelopment for the Commonwealth Games, which deepened his connections with the city's political and business elite.

Wylie is also a close friend of former prime minister Paul Keating, who is executive chairman of the investment bank.

The recent flood of work has led Carnegie Wylie to bolster its team with the hiring of corporate heavyweights Peter Hay, former chief executive of law firm Freehills, and Goldman Sachs JBWere's former managing director and joint acquisitions chief, Jeremy Mead.

Last June, Telstra appointed Carnegie Wylie as a second adviser behind Merrill Lynch in the expected sale of T3. If the sale goes ahead, the company can expect to earn fees that will put even those of recent months in the shade.