HONG KONG (Reuters) – South Korean retail giant Lotte Group will not submit a final offer for Oriental Brewery (OB), a source said on Friday, opening the way for a private equity buyer for the country’s No. 2 beer company. Anheuser-Busch InBev (INTB.BR), the world’s largest brewer and the owner of OB, is accepting final […]
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Activist investor Carl Icahn and private equity fund Oaktree Capital Management have amassed hundreds of millions of dollars of MGM Mirage (MGM.N) bonds and have told the troubled casino firm it should quickly overhaul its massive debts in bankruptcy, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the matter. The […]
NEW YORK (Reuters) – A federal bankruptcy judge ruled on Thursday that a joint $87.6 million bid by investment firms Hilco Consumer Capital and Gordon Brothers Group LLC was the “best offer” in the auction for bankrupt camera maker Polaroid’s assets, a Ritchie Capital spokesman said. The spokesman said the offer beat out rival Patriarch […]
Following my post this morning on ABS Capital's partial exit of Rosetta Stone, I spoke with Phil Clough of ABS Capital. He said private equity activity in the education sector, which has proven to be wildly successful for his firm, is getting a bit overheated. It's a curious thing to say; Rosetta Stone's debut traded up more than 40% today, and Bridgepoint Education, another for-profit education company backed by Warburg Pincus, traded up in its debut this week as well. The pair of IPOs are the first PE-backed offerings of the year and mark the first time the markets have seen two IPOs in one week in 11 months. (For context, Thomson Reuters has published a chart showing there was an average of 3.9 IPOs per week in 2007.) And it's not ABS Capital's first success in the sector. The firm made a killing on its offerings of American Public Education, which it floated for 17.1x its money in December. Prior to that, the firm made 2x its money selling CourseAdvisor Inc. to Washington Post after owning it for only a year. And as I reported earlier, ABS Capital is poised to make 6x its money on Rosetta Stone based on a $25 per share stock price. Even so, Clough said finding another home-run education deal in this market wouldn't be as easy.
The education sector has been good to private equity this year, especially in the case of ABS Capital. The firm is poised to earn at least 6x its money on its investment of Rosetta Stone Inc., a foreign language learning software business. Yesterday the company priced its IPO at $18 a share, well above its expected range of $15 to $17. Today, the shares opened at an impressive $23 a share, and as of 11:00 a.m. they had risen above $25. So let’s break down what that means for ABS Capital’s investment. The firm purchased Rosetta Stone with Norwest Equity Partners in 2006 for $62 million. ABS Capital put down $29 million in...
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Rosetta Stone Inc (RST.N) shares rose nearly 44 percent in their trading debut Thursday, following the company’s initial public offering, the fourth in the United States this year. Rosetta Stone, a provider of language instruction products, opened trading at $25, the morning after it priced its IPO at $18, exceeding the […]
Fortegra Financial Corp., an insurance services company owned by Summit Partners, has acquired Bliss & Glennon Inc. from Willis HRH Inc. No financial terms were disclosed. Bliss & Glennon provides transaction-based wholesale insurance brokerage.
LONDON (Reuters) – Privately owned French construction speciality chemicals company Materis is asking lenders to reset its leveraged loan covenants and relax its repayment schedule, two bankers close to the deal said on Thursday. The proposals to amend a 2 billion euro loan accompany a new business plan that was unveiled to lenders at a […]
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Rosetta Stone Inc (RST.N) shares priced at $18 in the company’s initial public offering, above the estimate range, a source with direct knowledge of the deal said on Wednesday, making it the fourth IPO on a U.S. exchange in 2009 as equities markets struggle to stabilize. Rosetta Stone sold 6.25 million […]
LONDON (Reuters) – Private equity firm BlueGem Capital Partners will invest 15 million pounds ($22.3 million) in Panmure Gordon & Co (PMR.L) in return for a 40 percent stake in the 130-year-old British stockbroking firm. Panmure said on Wednesday it would use the money to expand into new business areas while BlueGem said its investment […]