Greencross in the Coles doghouse

Coles Group chief executive Leah Weckert ended months of agony for the company's institutional investors on Friday, walking away from nine months of due diligence on Greencross, the TPG-owned holding company for Pet Barn. Coles' big shareholders were understandably worried Coles would overpay for Pet Barn and that its $4 billion foray into four-legged friends would distract from running the core supermarket franchise.

Weckert's eleventh hour pull-back from the brink provides a new headache for TPG Asia co-head Joel Thickins and his team. Thickins has had a forgettable few weeks after playing dominos with assorted high-end vehicles in Sydney's eastern suburbs then refusing a breathalyser test. He later pled guilty to negligent driving and received a criminal conviction. 

The private equity overlord was banking on Coles taking Pet Barn off his hands and delivering a $500 million performance fee windfall for TPG, of which Thickins' share would have been very jammy indeed.

Thickins has now taken his Pet Barn bride to the altar three times, and all three suitors – Wesfarmers, EBOS and now Coles – got cold feet at the last minute. Having exhausted all available trade buyers (Woolworths is excluded because it majority-owns Pet Barn's major competitor, Petstock), TPG is now left to exit the company via a public market float or (like the many thousands of unloved PE-owned companies clogging up the IPO pipeline in the United States) roll it over into a "continuation fund" – the purgatory where countless PE portfolio companies are parked indefinitely.