(Reuters) - Egan-Jones Proxy Services has recommended that Barnes & Noble Inc. shareholders support the bookseller in its proxy battle with billionaire investor Ron Burkle, becoming the second advisory firm this week to side with the bookstore chain. Egan-Jones said shareholders should support two of Barnes & Noble's three nominees for the board, including chairman and top shareholder Leonard Riggio at the retailer's annual meeting on Sept. 28 in New York. It also urged them to reject Burkle's proposal to change Barnes & Noble's anti-takeover poison pill.
(Reuters) - Buyout firm Silver Lake agreed on Sunday to buy a minority stake in Brazilian Web hosting company Locaweb for an undisclosed sum, to tap explosive growth in the world's fifth-largest Internet market. Locaweb currently hosts one in every four sites with the ".com.br" domain root. Silver Lake's Silver Lake Sumeru, the private equity fund's unit that invests in mid-sized technology companies, made the purchase of the undisclosed stake in Sao Paulo-based Locaweb, the company said. Sumeru has about $14 billion of investors' money in Nasdaq OMX, Avaya, Skype and other technology companies.
(Reuters) - KKR & Co., TPG Capital, Carlyle Group and Bain Capital Llc are competing to acquire a part of Honda Motor Co's stake in India's biggest motorcycle maker, Hero Honda Motors, Bloomberg reported. Two of the funds may jointly buy about 15 percent, valued at $1.1 billion in Hero Honda, the news agency said, citing three anonymous sources. Another 5 percent may be sold to the Munjal family, founders of the Hero group, the report said, citing two unidentified people. Honda Motor and the Hero Group each own 26 percent in Hero Honda.
Aspen Dental, which is being acquired by Leonard Green, received a “B” corporate credit rating with a stable outlook from Standard & Poor’s. S&P, in a statement Thursday, said the stable rating reflects expectations that Aspen will continue growing but that leverage will remain high. It’s unclear how much debt Aspen actually has. However, Aspen Dental is in the market trying to raise about $230 million in fresh credit. This includes a $195 million term loan and a $35 million 5-year revolving credit facility, according to Thomson Reuters Loan Pricing Corp. UBS is leading the loan package, LPC said.
An investor group led by Gores Group LLC of Los Angeles acquired the Cosmopolis high purity cellulose mill from Weyerhaeuser Co. Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed. The group includes Dermot Smurfit, a paper and packaging industry veteran.
Catterton Partners sold a controlling stake in its portfolio company Heartland Recreational Vehicles LLC to Thor Industries Inc. for more than $200 million in cash and stock. Heartland will continue to operate under the same name and will maintain its current brand portfolio.
K-Sea Transportation Partners LP completed its agreement with KA First Reserve LLC. K-Sea Transportation sold 2.8 million more convertible preferred units for $15 million. The transactions raised $100 million in exchange for a total of 18.4 million convertible preferred units. KA First Reserve is a partnership between First Reserve and Kayne Anderson Capital Advisors that previously agreed to invest $100 million in K-Sea Transportation Partners L.P. in exchange for the 18.4 million units.
(Reuters) - VMware Inc (VMW.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) is in advanced talks to buy Novell Inc's (NOVL.O: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) Linux operating system business, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday, citing people familiar with the matter. The paper reported that private equity-backed software company Attachmate Corp [WIZARA.UL] could buy some or all of Novell's remaining assets.
(Reuters) -- TDC A/S, the private equity-backed Danish telephone company, is close to a deal to sell Swiss unit Sunrise to buyout firm CVC Capital Partners CVC.UL, six people familiar with the matter said on Thursday. The deal will place an enterprise value on Sunrise of about 3.3 billion Swiss francs ($3.3 billion), four of the people said, making it one of the year's largest leveraged buyouts. A deal is likely to be announced on Friday, some of the people added.
SouFun Holdings Ltd. said late Thursday that it had priced 2,933,238 American depositary shares at $42.50 each. Each ADS represents four Class A ordinary shares of the company. SouFun will begin trading Friday on the NYSE under the ticker "SFUN." Underwriters on the deal have the option to buy another 439,986 ADS's. Current major shareholders of SouFun include IDG Venture Capital and Telstra. After the IPO, General Atlantic and Apax Partners will become major shareholders. SouFun is a real estate Internet portal and home furnishing and improvement website in China.