Australia’s largest provider of salary packaging administration services and fleet solutions, McMillan Shakespeare’s stock was offered at 50 cents and debuted on the ASX at 70 cents, closing at 74 cents on its first day.

The company has a current market capitalisation of $50 million. McMillan Shakespeare Australia (MSA) was bought from Zurich Australia Ltd last month by a syndicate incorporated as McMillan Shakespeare. The syndicate included MSA management and employees as well as private investors. They floated the company within a week of the completion of the acquisition.

Bakers’ lead partner in the deal, Hamish Walton, said: “This has been a dynamic and exciting deal to be involved with. Because the acquisition was financed via three different sources — a bank, private equity and the float — we wanted the IPO to be really successful. I don’t think we could have hoped for a better result.”

At the announcement of the acquisition on 10 March, Anthony Podesta, MSA’s founder and now managing director of McMillan Shakespeare, said he was proud the organisation was again a wholly Australian-owned company.

“A significant number of our workforce has subscribed for shares in the IPO, which is indicative of the support and backing for the acquisition from the entire MSA team,” Podesta said.

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McMillan Shakespeare has invested more than $5 million in a new proprietary IT system to improve customer service and processing efficiencies in anticipation of having to handle increased demand for its services.

As well as Walton, the Bakers team included partner Simon Lynch and lawyers Chris Chambers and Tim Best.