The Swedish private equity fund manager EQT – which has EUR$41 billion in assets under management – has overcome the NZ High Court challenge by Metlifecare when it first cancelled its takeover of the company for $1.49B ($7 per share) and then dropped its offer to $1.28B ($6 per share), claiming COVID changed everything.

COVID did, but not as initially thought with a sales crash. New sales enquiry is now up, not down (see our NZ story).

Metlifecare’s share price had fallen by around 54% on the back of the economic slowdown caused by COVID-19 but has now recovered back to the new $6 offer price.

With assets of $3.6B, it has an operating cash flow of $123M.