It looks as if Cantrell & Cochrane's plans to go public have very definitely been put on ice and it will need an acquisition of real substance if it is to gain the scale it needs to be attractive to international fund managers.
Exposure to the booming Irish economy has in the past few years been one of the attractions of companies like C&C, but with the naysayers and prophets of doom in London still convinced that a Celtic bubble is in prospect, companies like C&C with a large Irish exposure are not very attractive. What C&C needs is not just scale to take its enterprise value above the €1 billion (£788 billion) figure that registers on fund managers' radar screens, but also a big acquisition outside Ireland.
Tony O'Brien has spoken about spending £300 million (€380 million) and then digesting that acquisitions for a year or so before going public and raising a lot of money to pay down debt. With C&C having an interest cover of less than 2, any big acquisition looks like a risky strategy.
Current Account would not be surprised if the eventual exit for BC Partners and indeed the eight-strong management team that owns a small chunk of the company is a trade sale. A trade sale might not have the glitz and glamour of an IPO, but is a lot cheaper to do.
