Tiger chief retiring kind
By Rod Myer
The Age
August 17, 2005
Richmond Football Club president Clinton Casey is to take his Retirement Services Australia group public, merge it with other operators and go on the aquisition trail.
The order of events is yet to be determined. "We were preparing the business for a listing late in the year," Mr Casey said. "Now there's a few other options that have been flagged and we're working our way through them."
Those options are mergers with existing retirement and aged-care operators and even teaming up with Macquarie Bank to form a listed vehicle.
"We're reviewing whether we should take a change of tack in the short term, put the listing off and do a roll-up (merger) first, or do the listing first and do the roll-up later," Mr Casey said.
He said Macquarie had been appointed as lead manager for the RSA listing, and some sort of joint venture with the bank was "one of the options that have been flagged as a possibility (but) they haven't put a formal offer to us".
"We're working with them and they do have retirement vehicles," Mr Casey said.
He declined to put a value on RSA but it is believed to be worth about $140 million. At the moment, it has more than 1000 retirement village apartments under management and 14 aged-care facilities.
"We are looking at projects in NSW and Queensland … our intention is to expand nationally," Mr Casey said.
"I think there's an opportunity for someone to stake a claim as the biggest retirement operator in the country. That's a mantle we'd like to attain but you won't get there doing one or two developments here and there. You need to have a fairly heavy acquisition trail."
The retirement and aged-care sector is increasingly becoming the target of big corporations, with players such as Primelife, FKP, DCA Group and Macquarie also on the expansion trail. Mr Casey recognises that but says RSA is prepared for a race.
"It's a matter of who gets out of the blocks first, and I'd like to make sure that we get there with what I consider to be the best management and facilities in industry," he said.
Funding those ambitions will take significant financial backing and the quick development by RSA of a business platform to match the muscle of its competitors. DCA, for example, has a market capitalisation of $1.78 billion and 5700 aged-care beds in Australasia.
Mr Casey said RSA was becoming his main focus after spending a lot of time on other business areas.
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