Wynyard Group considers NZX listing

Wynyard Group says it is considering a listing on the NZX within the next two months.

UBS has been appointed lead manager and organising participant for the offer.

Only retail investors registered with a broker and financial institutions will be able to buy shares at listing. There will be "no public pool and no provision for over subscriptions.

A fully-owned subsidiary of Christchurch-based Jade Software, Wynyard Group one a landmark agreement to commercialise NZ Police-developed digital forensics technology, and sell it to law enforcement authorities around the world. Earlier, Jade won a similar contract to commercialise technology developed for the Australian Federal Police.

Best established in the Australasian markets, Wynyard software is in use by the London Metropolitan Police and the New Zealand and Australian police forces, global banks and corporations, and is making inroads into the huge US market, where its products have impressed the Department of Homeland Security.

Wynyard has a strategic relationship with US defence contractor Northrop Grumman and has been signalling since last year it was planning a great leap forward strategy in 2013 and 2014.

Managing director Craig Richardson told BusinessDesk in January the company was seeking multi-million dollar deals in the US during 2013 and 2014, and would need capital support to support such fast growth.

Jade's total revenue last year was around $35 million, with Wynyard around half of that.

If the IPO goes ahead, it will continue a mini tech boom on the local bourse which has seen strong gains for Xero and Diligent, and a pending listing by SLI Systems over-subscribed.

Wynyard Group gets own board as capital needs loom

April 14: Fast-growing intelligence software company Wynyard Group is considering its capital needs, but newly appointed chairman Murray Horn is not commenting on whether that might include a New Zealand stock exchange listing.

Wynyard's owners, Christchurch-based software systems developers Jade Corporation, have appointed a seven member board headed by Horn, a former Treasury Secretary and head of the ANZ Bank in New Zealand, and which includes NBR RichLister Guy Haddleton, a San Francisco-based software guru.

Haddleton was an adviser to Xero, the New Zealand online accounting system with global ambitions, for its listing on the NZX and is pursuing his own global play with Anaplan, an enterprise performance and planning system.

Horn would not be drawn on whether stock exchange listing was an option for Wynyard, which has attracted a suite of top global banks and defence, police and intelligence agencies as customers.

"We are a company with growth prospects so we are considering all our capital options," he said. "We will need to fund the growth ambitions one way or another."

Also appointed as new independent directors along with Haddleton are a former ANZ New Zealand managing director and colleague of Horn's, Susan Peterson, and US-based software entrepreneur Herb Hunt.

Representing Jade, which has supported Wynyard's growth to date, are Raj Bhole, a US-based orthopaedic surgeon and 25 percent Jade shareholder, and Richard Twigg, representing Jade's 57 percent majority shareholder, the UK-based building society, Skipton.

Managing director Craig Richardson, who was recently appointed to the board of the government's new smart-growth business agency, Callaghan Innovation, rounds out the seven member board.

Richardson told BusinessDesk in January the company was seeking multi-million dollar deals in the US during 2013 and 2014, and would need capital support to support such fast growth.