Buyers emerge for Pepper Homeloans

Pepper Homeloans may be on the market, with two bidders in the wings, the Sydney Morning Herald reported in its CBD column.

One bid is from a syndicate involving former executives of Babcock & Brown and including Phil Green and Trevor Loewensohn. A third member of the syndicate is Neil Sinden, the former chief executive of GMAC in Australia.

Some members of this group are associated with the buyout of GMAC last year.

A second bidder for Pepper may be Pengana Capital, a business run by some of the same executives who founded Seiza Capital (which was an early casualty of the credit crunch).

A third bid is believed to have come from Singapore's IFS Capital, the newspaper reported.

Grant Samuel is managing the sale process for Pepper's owner, KTP Global Finance, formerly Oakwood, which is in turn part owned by Italian investment group Compagnie Industriale Riunite.

Pepper Homeloans website says it has $4.5 billion in mostly non-conforming loans under management, though the SMH puts this at $3.5 billion.

Like its rival Bluestone, Pepper has, over the last year or two, concentrated on seeking new business servicing the loan portfolios of other lenders rather than undertaking much new lending.