Two rival consortia are battling it out in a race to buy a big stake in Together Financial Services, one of Britain’s biggest independent mortgage lenders.
Sky News has learnt that Bain Capital and JC Flowers have joined forces, and have hired bankers at Morgan Stanley to advise them on their interest in Together.
Bain and JC Flowers are no strangers to each other, having jointly bought a minority stake in the Co-operative Bank.
A separate consortium comprising Centerbridge Partners and Bayview Asset Management, a US-based investor in mortgages and consumer credit, is also bidding.
The latter group is being advised by Goldman Sachs.
The two remaining parties are expected to table final offers next month for a stake of up to 40% in Manchester-based Together, with the whole company likely to be valued in the region of £1.7bn.
The sale of a sizeable stake is expected to yield a windfall worth hundreds of millions of pounds for Together’s founder, Henry Moser.
Bankers at Rothschild are advising Together and Mr Moser, who established the company in 1974, on the process.
Last year’s Sunday Times Rich List estimated the wealth of Mr Moser and his family at £1.1bn.
In 2006, he sold a minority stake in the company to Equistone and Standard Life Investments for £113.5m, buying it back a decade later.
Together is one of a number of consumer finance groups exploring a sale, with volatile equity markets and Britain’s escalating cost-of-living crisis effectively ruling out flotations as an alternative option.
A spokesman for Together declined to comment, while none of the remaining parties in the process could be reached for comment.
