April 30 (Reuters) – Railroad equipment supplier Greenbrier Cos (GBX.N) and private equity firm WL Ross & Co said they have jointly acquired a lease portfolio of nearly 4,000 railcars valued at about $230 million. The firms acquired the portfolio through a newly-formed venture, WLR-GBX, to be owned by affiliates of WL Ross for the […]
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Lyondell Chemical Co said on Friday that it has exited bankruptcy after a 16-month process during which its debt load was reduced to about $5 billion from $24 billion. The company, which went bankrupt last January after a drop in business due to the economic downturn left it unable to make […]
It's been a rollercoaster of an April. Click through for a rundown of the past month's biggest successes, failures and tales of idiocy.
Last month, Cerberus Capital announced an agreement to buy Boston-based hospital chain Caritas Christi for $830 million (including the assumption of pension obligations). It promised to maintain the company’s Catholic identity, which includes significant charitable contributions, and to not sell/shut any of the hospitals or take the company public for the first three years. My question isn’t about how Cerberus plans to turn the hospitals into for-profit institutions – there actually is a road map for that in Massachusetts, as evidenced by Vanguard's work on St. Vincent’s hospital in Worcester – but rather if that $830 million pricetag will stand.
Madison Dearborn Capital Partners has agreed to acquire a 51% equity stake in consumer credit reporting company TransUnion from the Pritzker family, which will retain the other 49 percent. No financial terms were disclosed, although the Wall Street Journal says the deal values TransUnion at around $2 billion.
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Supermarket chain BI-Lo LLC said on Thursday it expects to exit bankruptcy in May, backed by its private equity owner Lone Star Funds, after it received court confirmation for a reorganization plan. BI-Lo, which has 207 supermarkets and over 15,000 staff, filed for bankruptcy 13 months ago, just days before two […]
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Investment firm Carlyle Group on Thursday said it will acquire $5.1 billion of credit assets from Stanfield Capital Partners, a New York-based fixed income money manager, the first of many such deals in a consolidating corner of the market. Carlyle, one of the world’s largest private equity investors, agreed to purchase […]
PARIS (Reuters) – One of the leading shareholders of Sperian Protection (SPEP.PA) is challenging an offer made by investment fund Cinven for the French protective equipment maker, Les Echos said on Friday.Investment fund Governance for Owners (GO), which holds about 10 percent of Sperian, has “serious doubts about the fairness of the offer and the […]
SINGAPORE (Reuters) – Private equity firm AIF Capital will buy a 10 percent stake in a Chinese university owned by Singapore-listed Raffles Education (RLSE.SI).The Hong Kong-based AIF will pay 350 million yuan ($51.28 million) for the stake in Oriental University City, which is located in China’s Hebei province and caters to around 36,000 students. The […]
TharpeRobbins Company Inc., a developer of employee attraction and retention programs, has raised an undisclosed amount of private equity funding from Gridiron Capital. The deal also included one-stop debt and equity co-investment from Maranon Capital.