Three more businesses – hotel chain Dalata, Corre Energy and Kenmare Resources – are poised to join a long list of public companies to have departed the Irish stock market in the past 15 years (Aer Lingus, CRH, DCC, Flutter and Smurfit among them).
We used to talk about the Iseq 20 as the benchmark index here, but at this rate Euronext Dublin will be lucky to have 20 stocks, big and small, left to trade.
There are different reasons why the three firms might depart the market. While well run and profitable with good growth potential, Dalata is trading at a discount to its net asset value and has initiated a strategic review that will most likely lead to a sale of the business.
Kenmare, meanwhile, is subject to a takeover battle while Corre Energy is running out of cash and badly in need of external funding.
But there is one common thread to the three scenarios: blue chip global financial advisory group Rothschild & Co.
Dalata has appointed Rothschild as its “financial adviser to assist with a review of its strategic options to optimise capital opportunities for the group and to enhance value for its shareholders”.
Separately, Rothschild is the lead adviser to Kenmare on the $473 million (€565 million) offer for the titanium and zircon miner tabled by the founding managing director Michael Carvill, who has joined forces with private equity firm Oryx Global Partners Limited to bid for the business.
In 2014, when Carvill was in charge of Kenmare, Rothschild helped him fend off an unwanted bid approach from Australia’s Iluka Resources.
Rothschild has also been advising the Dublin-listed, Dutch-based Corre since April last year on securing a big external investor.
Earlier this month, it emerged that Corre is down to just €2.5 million in cash and plans to delist from the stock market, having “identified potential funding solutions for the portfolio going forward which are outside the public markets”. No details were given on those solutions.
So while these likely departures are bad news for the Irish stock market, one can guess that won’t be top of the minds of Rothschild’s rainmakers as the fees roll in.
