Yellow Pages pulls offer - for now

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Yellow Pages Group has pulled its subordinated bond offer, saying the ongoing financial market volatility made capital raising too difficult.

Wednesday, September 5th 2007, 3:29PM

Yellow Pages chief executive Dudley Enoka says global credit market conditions, compounded by localised impacts of successive finance company failures – including three placed into receivership in the past week - had led to widespread uncertainty across the investment sector.

"The investment climate is being impacted across the board. Simply, we don't believe the market is in a position to do this offer justice and deliver on our objective of enabling broad-based New Zealand investor participation in the company," Enoka says.

In April a consortium made up of private equity firm CCMP Capital Asia and the Teacher's Private Capital – the private investment arm of Ontario Teacher's Pension Plan, brought Yellow Pages from Telecom for $2.4 billion. At the time of the purchase it said it would give New Zealanders an opportunity to invest in the business.

Enoka says the group had followed through on the commitment to fully investigate the offer, despite the challenging market.

"Having now seen that process right through, the reality is that deferral is the appropriate course of action."

He said an offer to the public "is something we may revisit at some point in the future."

With more than $780 million invested in the business, and with all senior and subordinated funding in place until 2013, the group had no immediate funding requirements, he says.

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