Professional Investment Services (PIS) plans to lodge two applications to list on the Australian Securities Exchange, with the group still intending to float its own business as well as its new planning entity.
"There has been a little bit of confusion in terms of people seeing this as an alternative to our own listing. And no it's not, it's in addition to," PIS managing director Graham Evans told InvestorDaily.
The new unnamed entity will be formed by the combining of a number of PIS' top financial planning and accounting practices.
"It's the next stage of our evolution. These businesses have grown; they are good businesses in their own right and combined they are quite a powerful unit," Evans said.
In terms of when both PIS and the unnamed entity would list, an exact date is not known.
"The PIS listing is on hold. I'm reluctant to speculate. At this stage it's an ongoing project but it's very much on the forefront of our minds," he said.
Commenting on PIS takeover rumours, Evans said: "It's fairly common and in the last couple of weeks we've had a number of phone calls from offshore and from Australia. But we certainly take those in our stride. Our main goal is to head on in the direction that we're going at the moment.
"I feel that our people are still very keen to remain independent. That's a message that we get regularly. You've got to argue that everyone has their price, but we have around 900 shareholders who are mainly our accountants and planners and I see their view would need to change a fair bit before that would actually happen."
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