JOHN THE MAN WHO PLAYS HARD TO WIN
21 April 2007
Australian Financial Review (Abstracts)

John Wylie is the hottest corporate adviser in Australia, with his company Carnegie Wylie, co-founded with Mark Carnegie in 1999, currently involved in three of the last year's biggest takeovers, competing with the biggest local and global private equity groups, and the ubiquitous Macquarie Bank. In March Carnegie Wylie, an adviser to Alinta along with JPMorgan, knocked Macquarie out of play in the Alinta takeover, as the energy company was sold to Singapore Power and Babcock & Brown thanks to a lower but simpler deal.

Opinions of Wylie vary from those who praise his networking brilliance, and those who criticise his preying on naive directors and chief executives. His aggression and myriad contacts have put him the middle of the country's current takeover flurry, where he has created bidding wars as adviser to both the Alinta and Colas boards. Wylie also advised BHP Billiton on the acquisition of WMC, and won a role advising Telstra on the T3 sale, as well as advising the government on selling Medibank Private, and earlier advising Coles on selling its Myer division.

His co-founder has won the role advising Qantas. In March, Carnegie Wylie was the third most successful mergers and acquisitions adviser in the country in terms of deal value, up from seventh in 2006.

Wylie has hit obstacles, as in his work on Lend Lease's failed bid for GPT. But the deal that made his name was his advice to Toll in its bitter but successful $6.1 billion takeover of Patrick Corporation.