LONDON (Reuters) – Indicative bids for Essent Milieu, the waste management unit of Dutch utility Essent, are due next Wednesday, a source familiar with the matter said. Earlier this year banking sources said Essent, which is selling its much bigger power production and delivery businesses to Germany’s RWE (RWEG.DE), hoped to fetch more than 1 […]
As usual, I have a week’s worth of Moody’s and S&P downgrades on PE-backed companies. Repeat offenders include Apollo Management, KKR, Carlyle Group and Bain Capital. We’ve also got one upgrade, which is Carlyle Group and Fenway Partners’ American Achievement Group. It’s basically an upgrade from the default rating after AAC’s parent company purchased some of its own senior PIK notes at a massive discount. Anyways, on to the list of 16:
AmWINS Group Inc., a Charlotte, N.C.-based wholesale distributor of specialty insurance products and services, has acquired three medical stoploss wholesalers. No financial terms were disclosed. AmWINS is a portfolio company of Parthenon Capital.
Ascension Insurance Inc., a Kansas City-based insurance and employee benefits agency focused on mid-market companies nationwide, has acquired the Dennis Bartlett agency, a Ft. Lauderdale, Fla.-based firm focused on medical malpractice. No financial terms were disclosed. Ascension Insurance is a portfolio company of Parthenon Capital and Century Capital Management.
Joe's Sports, a Wilsonville, Ore.-based sporting goods and outdoor equipment retailer, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The company said it would not sell any of its 30 stores during the restructuring. Gryphon Investors bought Joe's Sports in early 2007 from shareholders that included Nogales Investors. www.joessports.com
Evolution Capital Partners has acquired Accurate Group LLC, a Charlotte, N.C.-based provider of title insurance and settlement services. No financial terms were disclosed.
Benelux-focused private equity firm Waterland has backed Netherlands-based second generation biofuel company BioMCN with €36m of equity. The deal is Waterland’s second of 2009, following its investment in another sustainable energy project, renewable energy project developer Enfinity Management. It provided Enfinity with €50m of equity earlier this week. “This is Waterland’s third major all-equity investment […]
Nearly two years ago, I moderated a debate of sorts between Kevin Conway, managing partner of Clayton Dubilier & Rice, and Andrew Ross Sorkin, ubiquitous M&A reporter for the NY Times. It was mostly about the behavior of private equity firms, with lots of talk about CD&R's involvement with car rental company Hertz. Specifically, Sorkin and others had essentially accused Hertz's private equity owners of doing little more than a quick flip ($15b acquisition to IPO in a year). Them's fighting words in LBO land, where most investors fancy themselves operational savants -- able to add value to a company with a touch of their finger (and then, and only then, profit from the improvements). Conway bristled at the overall criticism, in part because CD&R and Hertz's other PE backers still owned most of Hertz, post-IPO. This was an important point emphasized over and over again. In fact, the PE firms still control Hertz today, with 55% of the company's outstanding stock. Well, I'm now thinking that a quick flip might not have been such a terrible idea.
(Reuters) – Human resources firm Gevity HR Inc (GVHR.O) agreed to be taken private by human resources outsourcing services provider TriNet Group Inc for about $98 million in cash, nearly doubling the value of its shares. San Francisco-based TriNet’s offer equates to $4.00 per share, which is almost double Gevity’s closing price of $2.03 on […]
I was recently informed that in quarters past peHUB has to posted very detailed quarterly charts of M&A data that breaks down private equity activity as a percentage of the total by regions. Apparently that lovely chart, which includes every quarter since 2000, hasn't appeared in this space for three quarters, but by request, we have updated it to include the full year for 2008. Needless to say, PE as a percentage of the total has dropped significantly from '07 levels. As a percentage of total M&A, it's down 69% worldwide and 82% in the US. Total Global M&A was only down 30%; in the US it was down 37%. (I use "only" as a relative term here...) We'll try to keep this data coming at a more consistent and timely pace each quarter. Download the spreadsheet after the jump.