Rothschild & Co’s bankers are understood to have started quietly sounding potential investors ahead of an auction.
Victorian property identities Michael and Andrew Buxton are testing buyer interest in their 26-year-old property development group, MAB Corporation, fuelling expectations of a potential sale worth more than $1 billion.Co’s investment bankers quietly approaching rival property groups and cashed-up investment managers, ahead of a formal two-stage process that could get under way as soon as next month.
MAB Corporation has a portfolio of residential, industrial and mixed-use property developments in Victoria.The group has completed nearly $5 billion in projects in the past two decades, and a $16.5 billion development pipeline. It’s best known for developing Merrifield, a housing estate about 30km from Melbourne’s CBD, and the $2.5 billion New Quay towers in Docklands.
Interested parties said they had already been told the Buxtons were looking for an investor “willing to make a substantial investment”, according to two sources with knowledge of the talks. That’s generally accepted dealmaker speak for a full or partial sale, depending on how talks play out in coming months.The Buxton brothers, part of a wider Buxton family with deep property connections in Victoria, set up MAB Corporation in 1995.