TAIPEI (Reuters) – The buyer of AIG’s (AIG.N) Taiwan unit Nan Shan Life should run it for at least seven years, the island’s financial regulators said on Tuesday, indicating there will be no swift exit for any buyer. “We do not welcome those seeking quick profits in the short term,” Sean Chen, chairman of the […]
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Freedom Communications Holdings Inc and 49 affiliates filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on Tuesday, becoming the latest newspaper publisher to seek court protection from creditors. Freedom Communications, which owns the Orange County Register in Southern California and more than 30 other daily newspapers and eight television stations, listed assets of $757 […]
This week's edition of the Laundry Room Chronicles is about eBay's agreement to sell a 65% stake of Skype to a group of private investors, at an enterprise value of $2.75 billion. Buyers include Silver Lake Partners, Canada Pension Plan, Andreessen Horowitz and Index Ventures. Also worth noting that this deal would be the year's largest leveraged buyout of a U.S.-based company (based on eBay's headquarters), or the third-largest buyout of a foreign company (based on Skype's Luxembourg headquarters). The sale is not financing-contingent, but does have debt lined up from JP Morgan, Barclays and RBC.
(Reuters) – Payments processor Cynergy Data LLC filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Tuesday and said it has agreed to sell all its assets to private investment firm ComVest Group through a court supervised auction. ComVest will act as a “stalking horse” bidder for Cynergy’s assets at the auction, according to papers filed with […]
LONDON/FRANKFURT (Reuters) – BC Partners agreed to take control of two lab-testing companies and merge them into a group with annual sales of 380 million euros ($545.6 million) in one of Europe’s few sizeable private-equity buyouts this year. Sources familiar with the matter said the deal gave the group an enterprise value of about 500 […]
NEW YORK (Reuters) – TCW Group Inc Chief Investment Officer Jeffrey Gundlach told Reuters on Tuesday that no private equity firm has spoken with him about acquiring the money management giant from its parent, France’s Societe Generale (SOGN.PA). The New York Post reported that Kohlberg Kravis Roberts is among a number of private-equity firms engaged […]
Global M&A volume for August was approximately $93 billion, according to Thomson Reuters (publisher of peHUB). This includes around $7.2 billion of private equity volume, which is a marked decrease from the $13.22 billion in July. The percentage of PE as part of the M&A whole, however, only dropped from 8.4% to 7.7 percent. Private equity volume last August was $13.5 billion, compared to $148 billion of global M&A. You can download the full spreadsheet by clicking here.
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Two large private equity investors in Builders FirstSource Inc (BLDR.O) on Tuesday unveiled a plan to recapitalize the money-losing provider of residential construction products, saying changes are needed to position it for a housing market recovery. Funds run by JLL Partners Inc and Warburg Pincus, which together own 49.9 percent of […]
(Reuters) - Internet auction and services company EBay Inc has reached a deal to sell its online telephony unit Skype to a group of private investors, the New York Times said, citing two people briefed on its plans. Andreessen Horowitz, a new venture capital firm headed by the Netscape co-founder Marc Andreessen, is likely to be among the investors in the group, the paper cited the people as saying. London-based Index Ventures and Silver Lake Partners may also be involved in the deal, one of the people told the paper. The paper added that the value of the deal, which is likely to be announced later on Tuesday, had not been disclosed.
TOKYO (Reuters) – Permira, KKR and CVC Capital are among the private equity firms bidding for Bellsystem24, Citigroup’s (C.N) telemarketing company in Japan, three sources said, in a deal that could fetch more than $1 billion. Bain Capital and trading house Itochu Corp (8001.T) have also submitted bids, said the sources, asking not to be […]