Nordic Capital has invested approximately $64 million into existing portfolio company Thule AB, in order to preserve its majority equity position. The move came after certain Thule lenders swapped debt for equity. Nordic bought Thule, a Swedish maker of auto roof-racks, from Candover last year for around €1.3 billion. www.thulegroup.com
NEW YORK (Hollywood Reporter) – Media giant Tribune recently filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and Sumner Redstone’s National Amusements theater chain violated a debt covenant. The moves beg the question: Who, if anyone, could be next in the broader media and entertainment industry? The global financial crisis has made debt harder to access and […]
Cerberus Capital Management made some non-Chrysler/GMAC news last week, when CNBC reported that the firm would limit investor withdrawals from one of its hedge funds. The announcement was made in a confidential Dec. 19 letter to limited partners of Cerberus Partners LP, and peHUB has scored a copy for your downloading pleasure. Most of the five-page letter is an ode to how lousy the market is and, by extension, how screwed investors are. It also reports that the fund's YTD performance as of Nov. 30 was -15.81%, including a loss of 12.18% in October and November alone. Follow the jump for some of the letters most quotable nuggets.
Atlantic Marine Holding Co., a portfolio company of J.F. Lehman & Co., has acquired two companies: Millennium Industrial and Marine Solutions Inc., a steel and pipe fabrication company specializing in on-site drill rig and offshore vessel repair and conversion, and Boston Ship Acquisition LLC, a dry dock operator and provider of maintenance, repair, overhaul and conversion services for non-U.S. Navy government vessels and cruise ships. No financial terms were disclosed.
César SA has sold its Halloween costume and décor unit, Disguise Inc., and a related Hong Kong entity to JAKKS Pacific Inc. (Nasdaq: JAKK) for $28.3 million. César is a portfolio company of France-based Butler Capital Partners.
Royston Run-Off Ltd., an indirect subsidiary of Enstar Group Ltd. (Nasdaq: ESGR), has completed its acquisition of Unionamerica Holdings Ltd. from St. Paul Fire and Marine Insurance Company. The $341.3 million deal was partially financed by $49.1 million in private equity from J.C. Flowers & Company.
(Reuters) – American Greetings Corp (AM.N), the second-largest U.S. greeting-card maker behind Hallmark Cards, will buy bankrupt rival Recycled Paper Greetings Inc to enhance its humorous greeting-card offerings. The deal consideration includes a combination of $54.7 million of new 7.375 percent notes due in 2016 and up to $18.4 million of cash in addition to […]
HONG KONG (Reuters) – China’s foreign exchange watchdog, the State Administration of Foreign Exchange, will cut back on overseas equity buys next year after suffering major losses on the collapse of U.S. lender Washington Mutual, according to sources. Earlier this year, SAFE, which controls around $2 trillion of China’s foreign reserves, agreed to invest up […]
NEW YORK (Reuters) – The federal bailout of auto lender GMAC LLC puts a floor under the potential losses for its owner Cerberus Capital Management and could provide a roadmap for the private equity firm and its investors to cash out with their remaining capital. The development underscores how the deepening government support for the […]
Private equity in 2008 was a shrinking slice of a shrinking M&A pie, according to preliminary data from Thomson Reuters (publisher of peHUB). Private equity firms have sponsored approximately $233 billion worth of deals so far this year, which represents nearly a 70% decrease in volume from last year's $765 billion tally. It's also the lowest annual total since 2003, when just $140 billion worth of PE-sponsored deals were transacted. For contrast, the global M&A market has "only" shrunk by a 29.8% rate between 2007 and 2008 -- meaning the private equity's piece of the action has dropped from around 18.35% to around 8 percent. It's important to note that deal volume is not necessarily indicative of a market's health or infirmity, as a goodly portion of last year's $765 billion was spent foolishly. But still, it's