Anchorage Capital Partners

Anchorage Capital Partners is an Australian private equity company with headquarters in Sydney.

Company name
In 2015, the company lost a case in the Federal Court against a similarly named United States company, Anchorage Capital Group, which also does business in Australia. The Australians were the first to register their website and claimed that the Americans had infringed on their trademark. The judge accepted the Australians had not copied the name of the pre-existing American company when choosing a name of their own.

Founders and management
Anchorage Capital Partners was founded in 2007 by Phil Cave, Daniel Wong and Michael Briggs. Cave had worked with private equity firms in the 1980s on deals involving well-known Australian brands such as Victa and Sunbeam, and was an executive director of Macquarie Bank. Anchorage's managing partners are Callan O'Brien, who worked as a lawyer for Cave before joining the firm in 2014, and Simon Woodhouse.

History
In 2008, Anchorage bought the Australian-owned canned fruit company Golden Circle and sold it about six months later to the H.J. Heinz Company in America. In 2009, it bought the New Zealand master franchiser for Burger King, Antares Restaurant Group, which it sold in 2011 to the Blackstone Group.

In 2012, the Dick Smith Electronics chain was bought for $20 million. The chain was floated on the Australian Securities Exchange the following year with a market capitalisation of $520 million. The float was described as the “greatest private equity heist of all time" by Forager Fund Management chief investment officer Steve Johnson. The Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees Association told a Senate inquiry that the chain had been stripped of cash. The company collapsed and the stores closed in 2016 but the brand name was sold to Kogan.com, which continued online sales. The company founder, Dick Smith, blamed Anchorage's greed for the chain going into receivership with the loss of more than 3,000 jobs. However, Anchorage management told the Senate inquiry they had left Dick Smith Electronics in a good financial position.

In 2014, irrigation company Total Eden was sold to Ruralco for $57 million. Clothing and footwear retailer Brand Collective was bought from Pacific Brands the same year, and sold in 2021 to the LK Group, the holding company of Melbourne businessman Larry Kestelman.

In 2020, Scott's Refrigerated Logistics, which supplies trucks and warehouses to big supermarket chains in Australia, was bought for about $75 million from AP Eagers. The same year, the rail freight company CF Asia Pacific was bought, and rebranded a year later as Rail First Asset Management. In November 2020, a bid to merge Anchorage subsidiary SPL with Spotless Laundries was abandoned after the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission raised concerns about a lessening of competition for commercial laundry services in Australia.

In 2021, financial software group GBST Holdings was acquired.

In 2022, the David Jones department store chain was bought from Woolworths South Africa. The selling price was reportedly about $100 million.

In 2023, turnaround plans for Scott's Refrigerated Logistics were hampered due to flooding and the COVID-19 pandemic. The company went into receivership, 1,500 workers were laid off, and plans were made to sell Scott's 500 trucks. Union officials blamed supermarket chain Aldi for refusing to sign a supply chain charter. A spike in fuel prices caused by war in Ukraine also hurt profitability.

Portfolio
As at March 2023, Anchorage's fourth fund was expected to be worth about $400 to $500 million. Previous funds were speculated to have fetched returns of more than 40 per cent. The portfolio in 2023 consisted of David Jones, GBST, SPL, and New Zealand companies Access Community Health and Evolve Education Group.

Notable former investments include Brand Collective, Burger King, Dick Smith, Golden Circle, RailFirst and Total Eden. Other investments have been in a diverse range of industries such as childcare, facilities management, manufacturing, scaffolding and solar energy.