O’Connor takes aim at small caps

Former Churchill Capital managing director Patrick O’Connor has emerged with a plan to launch a public investment company aiming at the volatile smaller companies sector.

SG Growth Equities Ltd, which will be managed by Mr O’Connor’s St George Capital Pty Ltd, plans to raise $50 million for the venture.

SG Growth Equities plans to use the funds to develop a portfolio of high growth potential, small cap companies. Mr O’Connor has a long track record in the mining sector and more recently biotechnology.

He was founder and managing director of Macraes Mining Co Ltd for most of the 1990s before getting heavily involved in the life sciences through Boron Molecular Pty Ltd, which was spun out of the CSIRO and bought two years ago by Xceed Biotechnology Ltd.

He only recently stepped off the board of OceanaGold, a spin-off from GRD Ltd, originally Macraes.

Mr O’Connor has been closely involved with Brett Fogarty’s GRD for some time, but it is understood that GRD is not significantly involved in his new project, if at all.

According to the prospectus obtained by WA Business News, SG Growth Equities is a private equity fund and will seek to build substantial shareholdings in undervalued small cap companies needing strategic leadership and capital market support.

SG Capital is currently acting as an authorised representative of the Mr Fogarty-linked Churchill Capital Services, utilising Churchill’s Australian Financial Services Licence. The manager has a preference for the life sciences, energy and resources, and clean technologies and environmental infrastructure sectors.

The SG Growth Equities portfolio has two initial targets in mind; listed Western Australian-based petroleum exploration group Adelphi Energy and Melbourne-headquartered Xceed Biotechnology.

Mr O’Connor is a director of Adelphi Energy Ltd. He is also chairman of Perilya Ltd and Acuron Ltd and a director of the Water Corporation of WA. He is non-executive chairman of Xceed Biotechnology, and non-executive director of Adelphi Energy.

Dr John White, chairman of GRD subsidiary Global Renewables Ltd, is a non-executive director of SG Growth Equities. He is also a director of GRD. The other director of SG Growth Equities is former WA Australian Medical Association president Dr Brent Donovan.