BrightSphere Investment To Divest Barrow Hanley, Copper Rock

(RTTNews) - BrightSphere Investment Group Inc. (BSIG) said that it agreed to sell its 75.1% ownership interest in Barrow Hanley to Perpetual Limited (PPT.AX), an Australian publicly listed financial services company, for $319 million.

In addition, Perpetual will redeem BrightSphere's seed capital investments in Barrow Hanley strategies at closing, which had a market value of approximately $44 million as of June 30, 2020.

BrightSphere anticipates utilizing a portion of its deferred tax assets to off-set cash taxes associated with the transaction, resulting in total expected after-tax proceeds of about $320 million including the seed capital.

The transaction is anticipated to close in the fourth quarter of 2020.

Separately, BrightSphere has agreed to sell its equity interests in Copper Rock to Spouting Rock Asset Management LLC and Copper Rock management. BrightSphere anticipates total after-tax proceeds from this transaction of about $15 million, including seed capital but excluding upside sharing arrangements.

BrightSphere said that it will use proceeds from the transactions to pay down debt and return capital to shareholders through repurchases. The deal could result in double digit accretion to 2021 ENI per share while also providing capital to support the continued growth of remaining affiliates by seeding new strategies.