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Liberty Files $300M Shelf Offering

Steve Ibbotson, Liberty Tax directorLiberty Tax has filed a shelf offering with the SEC that will give it more capital. But it also would enable one private equity investor to cash out and the company's major shareholder to reduce his holdings. The company says that it has no plans to announce any specific uses of the funds.

The filing includes $200 million in securities whose sale would benefit the company. These could include stocks, debts and warrants, but no allocation among these types is described with the documents filed with the SEC. Liberty has not sold securities offerings as it chose to become a public reporting company without an initial public offering.

Another $98.7 million would be sold by two investors These include 871,115 to be sold by Envest funds, a private equity, which would completely liquidate it holdings in the tax preparation channel. The remaining 2 million shares would be sold by Datatax Business Services, leaving it with 1.5 million shares that would comprise 11.3 percent of Liberty's Class A shares. At its height, the investor held 31.02 percent of Liberty's shares.

Datatax's director is Steve Ibbotson, general manager of Farm Bank Consultants, a tax preparation and consulting firm serving farmers and small business owners across Canada. Ibbotson has been a director of Liberty since 1999. He has also been a director of low-cost accounting company, Kashoo, since May 2009.

Liberty was founded by John Hewitt who served as CEO of Jackson Hewitt until June 1996. He founded Liberty in October that year and operations stayed in Canada until his non-compete with Jackson Hewitt in the United States expired.

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