Tribeca offloads SMSF business ahead of Washington Post sale
Three months before its shareholders are expected to approve a $55 million sale to The Washington Post, financial services education provider Tribeca has sold its self-managed superannuation fund (SMSF) establishment business to a listed Australian company.
The SMSF document producing business unit, which was picked up by Tribeca in December 2004 when it bought The Strategist Group, has been sold to listed administrative support outfit Espreon for $1.5 million.
The sale has no implications for The Washington Post deal, Tribeca said in a statement released to the Australian Stock Exchange this morning.
“The sale price of the business is near book value and does not impact on Tribeca’s operating earnings outlook for the year ended June 30, 2006.”
Chief operating officer John Prowse said the sale was part of a strategy implemented months ago.
“It follows the same pattern of the disposal of the compliance business in June.”
“The real reason we bought the Strategist Group was that they’re a high end training capacity business and that’s the part we wanted to hold onto.”
Prowse said Tribeca had also entered into an alliance with Espreon to cross promote each other’s products. This will help Tribeca reach Espreon’s largely accountancy-based clientele, while Espreon will benefit from exposure to Tribeca’s traditional financial planning base.
Tribeca announced it had entered into a purchase agreement with The Washington Post subsidiary Kaplan last Thursday.
Kaplan is a New York-based company that provides education services across a range of disciplines including health care, business, education, financial planning and information technology.
Prowse said it was in Tribeca’s rights to continue business as usual, even if that involved selling off arms of the business, despite entering into the sale agreement with Kaplan.
“I’d be very surprised if [Kaplan] didn’t agree strongly with the [Espreon] deal. After all, they’re buying us for our training capacity.”
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