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Ardian Raises $8.9 Billion European Fund | Medline Weighs Sale | Taylor Swift’s New Old Groove
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Greetings, Pro PE readers. First off in today’s news, our own Ted Bunker reports on a whopping fundraising effort by Paris-based Ardian, which has rounded up €7.5 billion (about $8.9 billion) for its latest European buyout fund, including capital for coinvestments. The firm has been on a fundraising streak in the past couple of years, wrapping up a massive $19 billion secondary pool last year.
The Journal has news that medical supply company Medline Industries is exploring a sale that is expected to attract private-equity interest. Meanwhile, Taylor Swift has continued her effort to gain control over her back catalog by recording a new version of an early album whose master recordings were sold to Shamrock Capital Advisors last year.
Finally, for all of you secondary investors out there, we just kicked off our annual secondary buyers survey and encourage you to participate. More details and a link to the survey are included below.
Read on for more …
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Ardian’s headquarters is in the historic Place Vendome in Paris.
PHOTO: CHARLES PLATIAU/REUTERS
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Ardian, one of Europe’s biggest private-equity firms, has wrapped up fundraising for its largest-ever buyout vehicle and plans to invest the roughly €7.5 billion (about $8.9 billion) with a trans-Atlantic flair, Ted Bunker writes for WSJ Pro Private Equity. The Paris firm raised €6.5 billion for its Ardian Buyout Fund VII and an additional €1 billion for co-investment alongside deals made from the vehicle through side agreements with some of the largest investors in the fund, according to Thibault Basquin, head of Americas investments for Ardian’s buyout strategy.
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Medline Industries Inc. is exploring a sale that could value the big medical-supply company at as much as $30 billion and mark the latest in a recent string of large leveraged-buyout bids, Miriam Gottfried and Cara Lombardo report for the Wall Street Journal. The family-owned company has hired Goldman Sachs Group Inc. to run the process, according to people familiar with the matter, who added that private-equity firms are likely to be among those interested bidders. The process is at an early stage, the people said, with some adding that an IPO or minority investment is also a possibility.
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Taylor Swift performs at an awards show in Los Angeles in 2019.
PHOTO: MARIO ANZUONI / REUTERS
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Pop superstar Taylor Swift came out with a rerecorded version of a major album from her early songbook last week in an attempt to reclaim a legacy that had been sold to a private-equity firm, Shamrock Capital Advisors. Ms. Swift’s “Fearless (Taylor’s Version)” recasts her original Grammy Award-winning 2008 recording, “Fearless,” which was part of a collection of releases that Shamrock acquired from talent manager Scooter Braun, Neil Shah reports for The Wall Street Journal. Mr. Braun obtained the master recordings of Ms. Swift’s first few records when he acquired the Big Machine label on which they appeared.
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WSJ Pro is conducting our annual survey of secondary buyers. If you are a secondary investor and are interested in participating, you can access the online survey at the link below. As we have done in prior years, survey responses are aggregated and individual responses are kept anonymous. Don’t miss your chance to participate in one of the oldest secondary surveys in the industry. Responses are due by April 21.
You can find the survey link here.
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84.5%
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The gain in the benchmark S&P 500 Index through Friday’s close of 4128.80 from its 2020 closing low of 2237.40 on March 23 of that year as the coronavirus pandemic turned cities into virtual ghost towns overnight.
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An Aramco oil facility, in Jiddah, Saudi Arabia.
PHOTO: AMR NABIL / ASSOCIATED PRESS
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EIG Global Energy Partners is leading an investment group that has agreed to acquire a 49% stake in Aramco Oil Pipelines Co., with rights to 25 years of tariff payments on oil moved through Saudi Arabian Oil Co.’s stabilized crude oil pipeline network, Ben Dummett and Sarah McFarlane report for The Wall Street Journal. The transaction is valued at about $12.4 billion. The deal, which also includes Abu Dhabi sovereign-wealth fund Mubadala Investment Co., values Aramco’s oil pipeline assets in Saudi
Arabia at about $25.3 billion.
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Apollo Global Management Inc. has extended the deadline for its $22 a share tender offer to take arts-and-crafts retailer Michaels Cos. private in a deal that values the company at about $3.3 billion. The New York buyout firm set 5 p.m. Wednesday as the new deadline to tender shares instead of early Monday. Apollo said that as of late Thursday, it had tenders for about 40% of Michaels shares. Georgeson LLC is the agent for the offer.
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Providence Strategic Growth Capital Partners has acquired a majority stake in risk-management software company Nalanda Global SA. The company based in Spain’s Madrid region is a software-as-a-service provider to companies in the engineering and construction sector to verify working conditions, supply sources and other business information. The Boston-based firm invested in the business from its PSG Europe fund, which closed on €1.25 billion (or about $1.49 billion) in limited partner commitments in February.
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Sole Source Capital has acquired two industrial technology companies that it plans to merge into a single provider of factory-automation systems. The industrial-focused firm in Santa Monica, Calif., bought data-collection company Peak-Ryzex, based in Columbia, Md., from Keystone Capital; it also bought hardware and software maker Optical Phusion Inc., based in Littleton, Mass., from its founders. Optical Phusion mainly serves the grocery, pharmacy and other retail markets.
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Berkshire Partners, which generally writes checks of $100 million to $1 billion per deal, is backing hair-care company Mielle Organics LLC. The Merrillville, Ind.-based company sells hair and skin care products. Berkshire’s minority investment leaves founder Monique Rodriguez in charge of the seven-year-old business, with existing investor New Voices Fund, which backed the company in 2019, remaining involved.
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Waud Capital Partners has committed $100 million to support a partnership with healthcare executives Bales Nelson and Allen Dye as they seek to identify, acquire and develop a technology-enabled healthcare services and staffing company. The men previously worked together at home health risk assessment services provider CenseoHealth, where Mr. Nelson was a co-founder and president and Mr. Dye was chief operating officer and head of business development. CenseoHealth was acquired to form SignifyHealth.
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Our add-on deal interactive tool allows you to sort and analyze volumes of add-on deal data compiled by WSJ Pro. View more.
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A blank-check company led by Innovatus Capital Partners co-founder David Schiff plans to raise $175 million through an initial public offering of shares, Stephen Nakrosis reports for Dow Jones Newswires. The regulatory filing detailing the offering by Innovatus Life Sciences Acquisition Corp. says that Innovatus, a specialist investor in life sciences businesses, had more than $1.6 billion in capital under management at the end of last year.
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A blank-check company backed by TPG’s TPG Pace Group is raising $250 million through an initial public offering of shares, priced at $10 each and expected to close on Tuesday. TPG Pace Solutions Corp. doesn’t have plans to target a specific industry for a prospective acquisition, saying only that it aims to combine with a company that is “well-positioned to thrive” as a publicly traded enterprise.
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ION Acquisition Corp 3 Ltd. has registered for a $250 million initial public offering of shares, Stephen Nakrosis reports for Dow Jones Newswires. The blank-check company is backed by Israel-based ION Asset Management and intends to find a merger candidate among “the rapidly growing universe of Israeli companies and entrepreneurs that apply technology and innovation to everyday lives.”
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Norwest Equity Partners has sold customer experience company Avtex Solutions to strategic buyer TTEC Holdings. NEP initially backed the Bloomington, Minn.-based company in 2018.
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SGT German Co., a Frankfurt-based private equity firm, said its German Startups Group VC GmbH sold two portfolio companies to realize “low seven-digit sales proceed” for each. The publicly traded parent company also said it expects to hold a first close on its latest private equity fund by June 30 with at least $1 billion, adding that it already has confirmed more than two-thirds of that amount.
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AE Industrial Partners has hired Mallika Gummalla as a director responsible for evaluating emerging technology themes and managing industrial sourcing networks. Previously, she worked in business development and sales in New England for Airtech USA and earlier worked for United Technologies Corp. in its building systems group.
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When the only hospital in a small central Wyoming city stopped delivering babies and cut back on surgeries, local residents sought to start their own. The fight that ensued now stretches to Washington, and is shining an uncomfortable light on one of the country’s biggest hospital chains and its private-equity owner, Brian Spegele writes for The Wall Street Journal. LifePoint Health Inc., backed by Apollo Global Management Inc., controls the only hospital in working-class Riverton, Wyo. After LifePoint merged Riverton’s hospital with another facility it owns in the city of Lander, 30 miles away, it began consolidating the hospitals’ services.
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H.I.G. Capital-backed Brazilian hospital group Kora Saude Participacoes SA plans to raise about 1.7 billion reais (roughly $303.9 million) through an initial public offering of shares in Sao Paulo, Reuters reported, citing a regulatory filing. The amount is based on the midpoint of the offering’s expected price range. H.I.G. is expected to sell some shares in the IPO.
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A discretionary budget request released by the Biden administration includes a sizable boost for a unit of the U.S. Treasury Department tasked with building a complex corporate ownership registry, Dylan Tokar writes for the Wall Street Journal. The White House request, announced on Friday, seeks to provide an additional $64 million to the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, or FinCEN, for the purpose of building the database, which is meant to help authorities combat anonymous shell companies and track flows of illicit money. The request would bring FinCEN’s budget to $191 million, an increase of about 50% from the unit’s enacted budget for the previous fiscal year.
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