Australian Financial Services (AFS) has entered into acquisition talks with a large national dealer group, according to the firm's chief executive.
"We're looking at some acquisitions and whether they come off or not really depends on whether an institution is going to come in and outbid us, which is basically what has happened in the past," AFS chief Peter Daly told InvestorDaily.
"Right now I'm working on a very large dealer group, so I've only got one but it's very big."
While Daly would not be drawn on how large the dealer group was and if it was another independent group, he said AFS had been in the due diligence phase since December.
"It's been going on for a month now, the difficulty has just been the Christmas period. But that one is looking interesting," he said.
"I think they're in a rush, but we will have completed our due diligence by the end of this month and I hope to be able to make a recommendation to the AFS board in February.
"We should know at that meeting whether the board wants to play or not. The board might just say 'continue negotiations' - it all comes down to pricing."
Daly also confirmed why AFS decided to push back its initial public offering (IPO) from December 2012 to March 2013.
"The reason that we talk about 2013 is that it's more practical. The objective was always to base the IPO on our results as at December 2012," he said.
"I have an EBIT [earnings before interest and tax] target that I'm aiming at and once I hit that EBIT target, or as I approach that EBIT target, that will really be the catalyst to go to an IPO."
