Amalgamated Capital, the leveraged finance unit of Amalgamated Bank, provided financing for Cortec Group's buy of Franklin Energy Services. Cortec is a New York PE firm. Franklin, of Port Washington, Wis., works on energy efficiency programs for utilities and government agencies.
Madison Capital Funding LLC has inked a deal with Orchard First Source that will allow Madison to increase its hold sizes. Chicago-based Madison Capital will manage a $225 million senior funding vehicle, called OFS Capital WM, from Orchard. Madison Capital also will source new loans to support the vehicle's growth, says Chris Williams, a Madison senior managing director. With the OFS vehicle, Madison's investments can be increased to roughly $45 million. Today, Madison Capital typically provides $20 to $25 million per deal. Madison Capital, a unit of New York Life, is a middle market lender that targets financial sponsors.
Earlier this month, Forbes came out with its list of top 100 most powerful women and I was shocked that no female PE exec made the list. Now, I may have a contender. Lynn Tilton has built Patriarch Partners into a force in middle market distressed investing, according to TheDeal.com. Tilton is CEO and sole principal of the firm, which manages around $7 billion of equity and secured loan assets. The firm has control positions in more than two-thirds of its 74 portfolio companies.
POST Integrations is the latest payment processor to go on the block with an unrealistic valuation, banking sources say. Phoenix-based POST Integrations, which provides credit card processing services for hotels across the nation, has hired Citadel as its financial adviser. POST has about $20 million EBITDA and is seeking bids of 12x, according to three people with knowledge of the situation. Mary Gerdts founded POST in 1991 and is currently the company’s CEO and president. POST’s customers include Hilton Hotels and Interstate Hotels.
Jake Foley, a former Deutsche Bank MD, has joined Houlihan Lokey's financial sponsors coverage group. Foley, also a Houlihan MD, covers large-cap hedge funds, PE firms and select asset managers. Foley was previously head of Deutsche Bank's transaction origination group. Houlihan Lokey, with offices in New York and Los Angeles, is an investment bank.
It’s been more than a week since Roark Capital unveiled its takeover of Auntie Anne’s, the pretzel maker, and now we have some deal details. FOCUS Brands, a Roark portfolio company, is launching a $285 million facility to back its buy of Auntie Anne’s. The deal consists of a $275 million term loan and a $10 million revolver, according to my compadres at Thomson Reuters Loan Pricing Corp.
Blackstone, the private equity firm, has completed its $1.02Bn purchase of 180 industrial properties from ProLogis, a distribution facilities company in Denver, Colorado. The deal includes its North American industrial portfolio, its minority stake in the Hilton New Orleans Riverside, and ProLogis’s interest in three of its property funds.
Royal Bank of Scotland has hired Morgan Stanley to advise it on a potential sale of its Spanish assets, believed to be in the region of $1 billion pounds ($1.6 billion). RBS previously attracted private equity interest in its British portfolio – with Blackstone interested, as well as Lone Star and Goldman Sachs – though RBS had not at the time decided whether to sell. RBS has a 5-year plan to clear 250 billion pounds ($397 billion) of non-core assets.
Private equity firm MerchantBridge, which has more than $1.5 billion of investments in Iraq, has launched the Mesopotamia Fund to further invest in Iraqi equities. MerchantBridge also plans to close a deal of up to $100 million in Saudi Arabia next year.
Invest AD, the investment vehicle owned by the government of Abu Dhabi, plans to raise $400 million for a new private equity fund by 2011, it announced today. The first closing of the fund will happen by the end of this year for $175 million, with Invest AD including $75 million of its own seed capital. The rest would be raised in 2011.