Australia's Perpetual knocks back EQT's improved $1.75 billion offer (updated)

Perpetual

17/07/2026 08:24

Updates to add graphic and analyst comment in paragraphs 5 and 6
EQT offered A$22.07 per Perpetual share
Board says revised offer still undervalues the company
Second rejection in a little more than two weeks
By Rajasik Mukherjee

    July 17 (Reuters) - Australia's Perpetual has rejected a sweetened A$2.5 billion ($1.75 billion) takeover proposal from Swedish private equity firm EQT EQTAB.ST, it said on Friday, the second time the wealth manager has turned away its suitor in recent weeks.
The Swedish private equity giant this week offered to buy all of Perpetual's shares for A$22.07 apiece, two weeks after its previous offer was deemed inadequate. 
Perpetual said its board had concluded that EQT's revised indicative proposal did not adequately reflect the company's value and was not in shareholders' best interests.
The latest offer represented a 2% increase on EQT's earlier A$21.64-per-share proposal, which valued the Australian company at A$2.45 billion. 
"If negotiations continue without meaningful progress, investors may increasingly price in the prospect that no transaction materialises, putting renewed pressure on the shares," said Hebe Chen, market analyst at Vantage Markets.
"But the rejection also increases the pressure on EQT to improve the price, the certainty of the proposal, or both, if it wants the process to move forward."
Perpetual's latest skirmish with EQT comes amid a broader reshaping of the company.
The company said in March that it had agreed to sell its wealth management business to Bain Capital for an upfront cash payment of A$500 million in a transaction aimed at simplifying the group and sharpening the focus on its remaining operations.
The deal followed years of pressure from investors for Perpetual to unlock value through asset sales, culminating in its 2024 announcement of an A$2.18 billion deal with KKR to sell its wealth management and corporate trust businesses, but it later terminated talks.
     
     
Founded in 1886 by a group of businessmen that included Australia's first prime minister, Edmund Barton, Perpetual has rebuffed takeover approaches from at least three suitors since 2022, including its largest shareholder.
     
($1 = 1.4318 Australian dollars)

(Reporting by Rajasik Mukherjee
Editing by Nivedita Bhattacharjee and David Goodman)
((Rajasik.Mukherjee@thomsonreuters.com;))