Cabot financial group to be sold or floated

Barclays Private Equity (BPE) is believed to be thinking about either floating its Financial services group Cabot. It may however sell it to a trade bidder or to another buyout group However, no decision will be made until 2006. Cabot, which acquires defaulted debt from banks, has increased its value to �250m. Its 1.2m consumer accounts have a value of around �1.5bn.