Steadfast acquires interest in MECON Winsure

Steadfast acquires interest in MECON Winsure

Steadfast Group Limited (‘Steadfast’) (ASX: SDF) today announced that it has acquired an interest in the MECON Winsure Insurance Group, being, ultimately, 76% of the MECON business and 100% of the Winsure business, (‘MECON Winsure’), a Steadfast strategic partner with a normalised forecast EBITA for the current financial year of $2.6 million.

MECON Winsure is an underwriting agency that specialises in providing insurance to the building and construction industry across Australia. They offer tailored end to end insurance solutions exclusively through broking partners.

Established in 2003, MECON Winsure now has offices in Sydney, Melbourne, Perth and Brisbane.

The acquisition meets Steadfast’s strict acquisition criteria including that it be EPS accretive within the first 12 months of ownership. The final purchase price will be determined based on performance for the year ended 30 June 2015.

Mr Robert Kelly, Managing Director & CEO of Steadfast, said: “We are pleased to add another high quality niche business to Steadfast Underwriting Agencies. MECON has been a strategic partner with Steadfast since 2009 and builds on our growing agency offering. Despite the fact that MECON is now part of the Steadfast Network we encourage our underwriting agencies to work with all brokers. Glenn Ross and his team have built a great business with a strong product and service offering and we are excited to be part of their next growth phase.”

Glenn Ross, CEO of MECON Winsure, commented, “We look forward to working with Steadfast as an equity partner and having the strength of the Steadfast Network behind us. Our business has been built on solid long-term relationships held with all our intermediaries supporting our market leading products and our underwriting partners. We expect Steadfast’s ownership in MECON will ensure that we continue to be a leading supplier in all our products and improve our
ability to deliver high quality, innovative products to our business partners.

We are also delighted that Hollard will remain a shareholder of MECON as they have been the ideal partners in getting MECON to the point where it is today.”

Mr Ross added, “I would like to personally thank our founding equity partner, The Hollard Insurance Group, for their outstanding support throughout the years and I look forward to our ongoing partnership.”

Richard Enthoven, CEO of Hollard in Australia added, “We are really proud of our longstanding partnership with Glenn and Peta Ross. MECON has been a wonderful success story and we are excited to work with Glenn and Peta, as well as our new partners, Steadfast, to take MECON to the next level.”

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