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Leonard Green Raises Nearly $15 Billion | Energy Impact Partners Heads to Europe | Dell Family Office Backs Off Stock Picking
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Good Monday morning! The holiday season seems to beget more forward thinking and resulting actions than many other times of year. In one example, Energy Impact Partners is joining other U.S. venture and growth investors in pushing its reach overseas, WSJ Pro's Will Louch reports.
In another example, Michael Dell’s family office, MSD Capital, is refocusing away from public equities to exploit its competitive advantages by deploying more of its $16 billion in assets across private markets, The Wall Street Journal’s Juliet Chung reports.
Last but not least, Leonard Green & Partners has raised $14.75 billion for its newest flagship fund and an inaugural midmarket-focused fund.
There is much more below concerning the latest deals and industry moves, so please read on...
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Venture Firm EIP Picks Ex-Carlyle Executive for Europe Expansion
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U.S. venture-capital firm Energy Impact Partners has hired Nazo Moosa as a managing partner for Europe. PHOTO: DANIEL JONES/DANIEL JONES PHOTOGRAPHY
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Energy Impact Partners, the latest U.S. venture firm to set up a presence overseas, has hired former Carlyle Group LP executive Nazo Moosa as a managing partner in London to lead an expansion into Europe. A Carlyle European technology team co-founder before leaving the firm in 2013, she is responsible for helping source investments in fast-growing European startups that will benefit from shifts in energy consumption patterns. EIP also recently opened an office in Cologne, Germany, and hired Matthias Dill to lead it as a managing partner.
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Leonard Green Raises $14.75 Billion for Two New Funds
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Leonard Green & Partners—the Los Angeles-based buyout firm that has backed burger chain Shake Shack, apparel retailer J.Crew and U.K. fitness chain Pure Gym—has raised $14.75 billion for two new funds, including a midmarket-focused fund, Ted Bunker writes for WSJ Pro, citing a person familiar with the matter. The Los Angeles-based private-equity firm collected the total in roughly seven months, including $12 billion for its latest flagship buyout fund, Green Equity Investors VIII LP, the person said. Both that amount and the $2.75 billion raised for midmarket-focused Jade Equity Investors LP, reached the upper limits the firm set for each vehicle.
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Michael Dell's Money Managers Change How His Wealth Is Invested
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Technology entrepreneur Michael Dell's family office, with $16 billion in assets, is refocusing away from picking listed stocks and devoting more attention to private markets, where MSD Capital believes it has competitive advantages. Those strategies have included private-equity, credit and real-estate investments. Separately, MSD co-founder Glenn Fuhrman, 54 years old, plans to retire at the end of December to start his own family office, according to people familiar with the firm. Fellow co-founder John Phelan continues to run the firm from Palm Beach, Fla.
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200 bps
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The degree of potential improvement in portfolio returns, in basis points, from dynamically adjusting exposures to different markets, industries and risk factors, based partly on algorithmic strategies, according to Jason Thomas, Carlyle Group’s head of global research.
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AMS Claims Osram Win as Over 55% of Shareholders Accept Bid
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AMS has claimed victory in its effort to acquire Osram Licht, whose Munich headquarters is lit up in the evenings. PHOTO: ANDREAS GEBERT/REUTERS
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Austrian sensor maker AMS AG claimed victory Friday in its effort to acquire Osram Licht AG, saying that it had won over enough shareholders in the lighting maker to move forward in its bid to acquire the German company. AMS said it had surpassed a lowered 55% acceptance threshold. The bidder had reiterated its €41 ($45) per share cash offer Nov. 7, and a rival bidding group led by Bain Capital and Advent International remained on the sidelines at that point. At €41 a share, the deal gives Osram an equity value of roughly €4.58 billion.
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Ardian has agreed to make a growth investment in German utility EWE AG, acquiring a 26% stake in the company valued at as much as €1.4 billion. Paris-based Ardian will become the company’s second-largest shareholder after EWE-Verband with a 74% interest. The deal will provide Ardian with a foundation for a German growth platform based in Düsseldorf and run by German managers.
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Private-equity firm Hanover Investors said last week that 93.5% of Brady PLC shareholders had accepted its 18 pence-a-share cash bid for the company, including a 46.1% stake acquired from Kestrel Partners and Coltrane Master Fund LP. The deal values the provider of trading, risk-management and settlement software at £15 million ($19.3 million). Hanover also said it had extended the offer indefinitely to investors who hadn't accepted it.
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London-based 3i Group PLC said a portfolio company, ACR Capital Holdings Pte. Ltd., has agreed to sell Singapore-based Asia Capital Reinsurance Group Pte. Ltd. to Catalina Holdings (Bermuda) Ltd., an acquirer of legacy reinsurance assets. Proceeds of the transaction, which involves non-life reinsurance, are expected to be about $155 million. The deal is expected to close in the first half of next year.
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Alignvest Management Corp. and affiliates have acquired Caribbean life insurer Sagicor Financial Co. through a court-approved deal. Toronto-based Alignvest said the acquisition culminated a two-year process that added more than $450 million to the Barbados-based insurer’s balance sheet. Alignvest said it worked with New York-based HG Vora Capital Management and the principals of Highgate Hotels, which will both be represented on the company’s board going forward.
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AEA Investors has agreed to acquire the Environmental Sciences business of Univar Solutions Inc. for $195 million. The Austin, Texas-based operation provides pest-management services across North America. The deal is expected to close by the first quarter of next year.
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Bain Capital Ventures, alongside the KCK Group, led a $30 million equity infusion in Crusoe Energy Systems Inc., a developer of systems that consume natural gas byproducts of oil extraction operations to power on-site computers. The transaction included another $40 million in project financing for the Denver-based company led by New York-based credit fund Upper 90. Crusoe's backers include Winklevoss Capital and Founders Fund.
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Varsity Healthcare Partners has recapitalized Peak Gastroenterology Associates alongside the company’s shareholder physicians.
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AMP Capital has acquired cloud-computing services provider Continental Broadband LLC, which does business as Expedient, from Landmark Media Enterprises LLC, marking Sydney-based AMP’s first investment in data centers as digital infrastructure components. WSJ Pro Private Equity reported that the Pittsburgh-based company was exploring a sale earlier this year. Its services share a geographic footprint with Everstream, a Cleveland-based fiber provider acquired by AMP last year, and positions AMP as a major player in the Midwest communications sector.
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Our new 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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Private-equity firm Thoma Bravo has cashed in some of its Dynatrace Inc. chips, four months after taking public the software-intelligence company it carved out of Compuware Corp. for $2.5 billion in 2014.
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British infrastructure projects developed by 3i Infrastructure PLC are being sold to various buyers, including funds managed by Dalmore, Semperian and Innisfree, the U.K. firm said Friday. Proceeds of the transactions are expected to reach roughly £194 million ($255 million). Also, the firm is exploring the potential sale of the European assets in its projects portfolio, according to a regulatory filing.
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Midmarket specialist Tailwind Capital has sold portfolio company Long’s Drugs Inc. to PharMedQuest, a Brea, Calif.-based company owned by private investment firm Kinderhook Industries. Columbia, S.C.-based Long’s operates in the U.S. Southeast as a retailer and pharmacy management company serving people with chronic health conditions. Tailwind has retained an equity stake in Long’s.
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Apollo Global Management Inc. has named Tetsuji Okamoto as a partner and head of Japan private-equity operations, a newly created role. He reports to Senior Partner Steve Martinez, Apollo’s head of Asia-Pacific, starting Monday. Mr. Okamoto joins from Bain Capital, where he led the firm’s Asia capital markets team and was a managing director on its Asia-Pacific private-equity team.
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AMP Capital has named Simon Ellis head of Americas, infrastructure equity, and hired Ric Gordon as head of asset management, Americas. Mr. Gordon joined from Macquarie Capital, where he led asset management for the Americas, Europe and Asia. Mr. Simon was previously head of origination, Europe for Sydney-based AMP.
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Thoma Bravo’s deal to take private Instructure Inc. for about $2 billion fell short of the company’s share price just before the deal was made public, leading some investors to object to the deal as inadequate for the Salt Lake City-based educational software provider. But the company said on Friday that a strategic review that led to the deal took 11 months and involved 40 parties, 19 of whom signed nondisclosure agreements, Dow Jones Newswires’ Colin Kellaher reports. Thoma Bravo’s offer of $47.60 a share, made public on Wednesday, was about 10% less than the stock’s $52.96 closing price on Tuesday. Instructure investor Rivulet Capital, which owns a 5.2% stake, Thursday
said it would vote against the offer because it undervalues the company. The stock closed Friday at $49.12 a share.
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Blackstone Group Inc. still awaits a written response from Tokyo hotel operator Unizo Holdings, which the New York firm offered to take private for 5,000 yen a share, Reuters reported. The bid values Unizo at 171 billion yen ($1.6 billion). Blackstone in October emerged as a bidder for Unizo and told the hotel chain it would launch a tender offer or explore other options if Unizo didn’t agree to its bid by a deadline, which it keeps extending.
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Investors increasingly ask private investment managers about sexual-harassment claims before deciding whether to invest with them, according to a new survey from the Investment Manager Due Diligence Association, a trade group. Among 78 investors surveyed, 26% said that they specifically ask about sexual harassment, up from 11% in a 2018 survey. But most, 71%, don’t ask and 4% don’t feel the question is important.
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CORE Industrial Partners sees university systems and technical schools getting on track to produce professionals capable of working with additive manufacturing, or 3D printing technology. John May, managing partner at the Chicago-based firm, told WSJ Pro Private Equity’s Luis Garcia that talent stream will help enable a 20% annual growth rate for the sector over the next decade.
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