PitchBook   The Daily Pitch: VC, PE and M&A June 5, 2020   Online gaming business Playtika has hired Morgan Stanley and other investment banks to prepare an IPO in the US sometime during the next year, according to Reuters. The IPO could allow the Israeli company to raise around $1 billion and reach a valuation of $10 billion, the […]

Luxury giant is likely looking to renegotiate the price it is paying for Tiffany, analysts say, as the sector faces a prolonged slump A Tiffany store in Madrid. The company has more than 320 boutiques world-wide. PHOTO: MARISCAL/SHUTTERSTOCK By Matthew Dalton June 4, 2020 11:23 am ET   PARIS—French luxury-goods titan Bernard Arnault is reviewing his $16 […]

NEWS PROVIDED BY Cineplex  Jun 01, 2020, 08:00 ET   TORONTO, June 1, 2020 /CNW/ – (TSX: CGX) – Cineplex Inc. (“Cineplex”) today provided an update on the status of the process to obtain Investment Canada Act approval (the “ICA Approval”) in connection with its previously-announced transaction with Cineworld Group plc (LSE: CINE) (“Cineworld”) pursuant to which an indirect wholly-owned subsidiary of Cineworld has agreed to acquire […]

  By NTV News   May 28, 2020 Irving Oil has reached a deal to buy North Atlantic Refining Corp. from U.S. investment firm Silverpeak, subject to regulatory review and conditions of sale being met. The deal includes the Come by Chance oil refinery, North Atlantic gas stations and Orange Stores, and other marketing assets. […]

  WSJ   HEARD ON THE STREET Exiting the pandemic, Shopify is a Canadian darling U.S. investors can no longer afford to ignore Outside Shopify’s Ottawa, Canada, headquarters on May 7. PHOTO: DAVID KAWAI/BLOOMBERG NEWS By Laura Forman May 26, 2020 6:00 am   ET At the start of this year, Canadian-based cloud commerce platform Shopify Inc. SHOP 2.84% may have been the […]

  by Catherine Lamb MAY 20, 2020  Imperfect Foods, the company that delivers surplus and “ugly” food directly to consumers, announced today that it had closed a $72 million Series C funding round. The round was led by Insight Partners with support from existing investors, including Norwest Venture Partners. This bumps the total amount raised by Imperfect up […]

  May 21, 2020 Treasury yields that are reliably this low have wide-ranging implications for markets and economy The ultralow 10-year Treasury yield has facilitated an explosion of corporate-bond issuance from the likes of Costco. PHOTO: RICHARD VOGEL/ASSOCIATED PRESS By Sam Goldfarb May 20, 2020   Yields on U.S. government bonds have stalled near all-time lows, […]

In April, 80% of money raised by U.S. IPOs was for companies whose purpose is to fund acquisitions Richard Branson outside the New York Stock Exchange before Virgin Galactic went public in October with assistance from a blank-check company. PHOTO: BRENDAN MCDERMID/REUTERS By Corrie Driebusch May 14, 2020 9:00 am ET Copyright ©2020 Dow Jones & […]

Paula Seligson and Justin Bachman BloombergMay 8, 2020 (Bloomberg) — United Airlines Holdings Inc. abandoned a $2.25 billion sale of junk bonds because it wasn’t satisfied with the terms, said people familiar with the transaction. The airline ultimately reached a deal but decided to pull it to seek more favorable terms and potentially a different […]

May 11, 2020 / 7:19 AM / Thomson Reuters Coty to sell majority stake in hair care brands to KKR in $4.3 billion deal (Reuters) – Cosmetics maker Coty Inc (COTY.N) on Monday said it had agreed to sell a majority of its professional beauty and retail hair businesses, including Wella and Clairol brands, to investment […]

May 07, 2020 12:00 ET | Source: Brookfield Asset Management Inc BROOKFIELD NEWS, May 07, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Brookfield Asset Management Inc. (“Brookfield”) (TSX: BAM.A, NYSE: BAM) today announced the launch of a Retail Revitalization Program (“the Program”) to bring much needed capital and assist with the recapitalization of retail businesses with operations in the major markets […]

PitchBook   driven by the PitchBook Platform By James Thorne May 5, 2020 Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky speaks at the New York Times DealBook Conference on Nov. 6  (Mike Cohen/Getty Images Entertainment) Airbnb has laid off almost 1,900 employees, about 25% of its workforce, as the travel industry continues to reel from the global pandemic. The vacation rental company’s […]

The 35-year-old tycoon has recast the company’s board of directors and sought a high-profile role for the social-media giant in the Covid-19 pandemic The Wall Street Journal By Deepa Seetharaman and Emily Glazer April 28, 2020 4:49 pm ET In December, Facebook Inc.’s top brass gathered at Mark Zuckerberg’s more than 700-acre beachfront estate in Kauai, Hawaii, for an unusual […]

​FlightGlobal By Cirium  1 May 2020 Lufthansa Group will remain grounded throughout the summer and does not expect a new market “balance” to be found until 2023, chief executive Carsten Spohr will tell the company’s annual general meeting on 5 May, in a speech pre-released on its website. Even in 2023, the carrier believes that passenger demand […]

April 28, 2020 The Wall Street Journal  HEARD ON THE STREET Any decisions the plane maker’s CEO makes to keep the company airborne come at the expense of its portfolio breadth By Jon Sindreu   Whatever flight path Boeing BA 2.04% finds through the Covid-19 crisis, it is unlikely to improve the U.S. aerospace giant’s competitive position versus European […]

Entrepreneurs built mini-empires of short-term rental properties, borrowing against revenue that’s now vanishing under coronavirus lockdowns THE WALL STREET JOURNAL By Tripp Mickle and Preetika Rana April 28, 2020 10:15 am ET For years, Cheryl Dopp considered the ding on her phone from a new Airbnb Inc. booking to be the sound of what she called […]

APRIL 20, 2020 / 2:45 AM / Coronavirus takes toll on global M&A as $1 billion deals disappear Kane Wu REUTERS   HONG KONG (Reuters) – For the first time since September 2004, no merger and acquisition deal worth more than $1 billion was announced worldwide last week, according to data provider Refinitiv, as the […]

FT.com Miles Kruppa in San Francisco, James Fontanella-Khan in New York and Alice Hancock in London  APRIL 23 2020 Expedia, the online travel booking company, has raised $3.2bn in fresh capital, including $1.2bn from the private equity firms Apollo Global Management and Silver Lake, to bolster its balance sheet amid a shutdown in global travel due to the coronavirus outbreak. The […]

KEY POINTS The private equity firm Sycamore Partners is looking to back out of its deal to take over Victoria’s Secret from L Brands, according to a lawsuit filed Wednesday. The deal for Victoria’s Secret to be taken private was reached in February, just weeks before the coronavirus pandemic started hammering the U.S. economy and […]

Reuters Rebecca Spalding and Jessica Dinapoli April 10, 2020 6:01 AM EDT Envision Healthcare Corp, a U.S. provider of physicians and other medical staff owned by buyout firm KKR & Co Inc, has hired a financial adviser to explore ways to restructure its $7.5 billion debt pile, people familiar with the matter said. Envision’s move […]

PitchBook News & Analysis driven by the PitchBook Platform ENERGY As oil plunges, bankruptcies loom for private equity portfolio companies By Eliza Haverstock April 20, 2020   (anatoliy_gleb/iStock/Getty Images Plus) Oil has plummeted to its lowest levels in nearly four decades. And some small crude producers—many of them backed by private equity—stand to lose the most. […]

  PitchBook April 15, 2020   (fancy.yan/Moment/Getty Images)   Designer jeans and clothing brand True Religion Apparel has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, citing an 80% drop in sales, according to The Wall Street Journal. The Southern California-based company has also reportedly furloughed most of its 1,000-plus employees and shuttered its 87 retail stores. That’s bad […]

 Business Insider Tyler Sonnemaker Apr 7, 2020, 9:38 PM Brian Chesky, co-founder of Airbnb. Stephen Lam/Reuters Airbnb will pay more than 10% in interest on the additional funding it just secured from Silver Lake and Sixth Street Partners, The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday. The investors were also offered warrants that can convert into stock based on a […]

Axios Apr 8, 2020 –  Dan Primack Illustration: Aïda Amer/Axios Staples recently informed landlords that it will not pay April rents for its U.S. stores, even though the locations remain open, Axios has learned. Why it matters: Commercial landlords are stuck in a tightening vise, forgiving or deferring payments from shuttered tenants while still needing to meet […]

PitchBook News & Analysis driven by the PitchBook Platform By Eliza Haverstock April 7, 2020   A worker passed through the streets of Wellington, New Zealand. (Hagen Hopkins/Getty Images News) The coronavirus outbreak has already caused a slowdown in mergers and acquisitions, and the unprecedented nature of the global crisis means executives don’t know how long […]

  PitchBook The Daily Pitch: VC, PE and M&A April 8, 2020   Restaurant software developer Toast let go of hundreds of employees on Tuesday, and the total number of workers affected could near 1,000, The Information reported. The news comes nearly two months after the company reportedly raised $400 million in a Series F at a $4.9 […]

Bloomberg Billionaire Fertitta Offers Record 15% Loan Rate to Save Empire By Davide Scigliuzzo and Jeannine Amodeo April 6, 2020, 9:58 AM EDT Updated on April 6, 2020, 4:14 PM EDT Landry’s $250 million loan is lifeline to restaurants, casinos Businessman puts $50 million of own cash to shore up business Tilman Fertitta Photographer: Chris Goodney Texas billionaire Tilman Fertitta is […]

By Mike Turner April 7 2020 Some M&A bankers are planning to pull the trigger on deals after the summer if the coronavirus pandemic continues to be contained, though lenders warn that internal credit analysis has become more stringent. The pandemic slammed the breaks on the global M&A market, with European activity shuddering to a […]

PitchBook April 7, 2020 Airbnb has turned to private equity barons rather than venture capitalists for its latest funding, pulling in $1 billion in a mix of debt and equity from Silver Lake and TPG Sixth Street Partners. The news comes a few days after a Financial Times report that Airbnb has cut its valuation to $26 billion, a […]

  By Tom Daniels  – March 27, 2020 Wanda Sports Group has agreed to sell The IRONMAN Group, one of the world’s biggest triathlon, running, trail running, cycling and mountain biking events to Advance Publications for £610m ($730) in cash. Advance own’s a variety of leading publications, magazines and journals including the likes of GQ and Vogue whilst also owning a major shareholding in Discovery. […]

PUBLISHED FRI, MAR 27 20201:47 PM EDT UPDATED 4 HOURS AGO Alex Sherman@SHERMAN4949 Michael Sheetz@THESHEETZTWEETZ CNBC Satellite broadband provider OneWeb plans to file for bankruptcy on Friday. OneWeb had raised $3.4 billion in capital, with SoftBank as its largest shareholder. SoftBank held recent discussions to bail out OneWeb but ultimately decided it couldn’t afford to […]

TorQuest Partners  Mars 27, 2020, 07:30 ET  TORONTO, March 27, 2020 /CNW/ – TorQuest Partners today announced the final closing of TorQuest Partners Fund V, with $1.375 billion of committed capital. Fund V will continue to apply the firm’s successful middle-market investment and operating strategy of partnering closely with management teams to create value through strategic change, operational enhancements, […]

Private equity managers should gather their cash and decide now which companies get life support, according to the consulting firm’s new playbook. Amy Whyte March 20, 2020 The Mystery of the Profitable Energy Marks Private equity firms may need to step in to help portfolio companies that “urgently need support” during the coronavirus pandemic, according […]

05 March 2020 Consulting.ca DuPont Sustainable Solutions has acquired Lodestone Partners, a Toronto-based operations consultancy serving resource companies. DuPont Sustainable Solutions (DSS) is a former consulting unit of the global chemical giant, focusing on operational improvement and workplace safety at industrial firms. The firm spun off from DuPont last year, with backing from private equity firm Gyrus Capital. […]

Private equity firms have loads of cash to put to work, but uncertainty, travel restrictions, and working at home are crimping transactions. Julie Segal March 15, 2020 Illustration by II Private equity’s biggest worry just months ago was how to remain disciplined as valuations continued to hit record highs. Now private equity shops and alternative […]

PitchBook March 13, 2020 (ismagilov/iStock/Getty Images Plus)   Even before a global pandemic clobbered the travel industry, Airbnb‘s losses were growing sharply. The home-sharing giant lost $276.4 million on an EBITDA basis in the fourth quarter on revenue of $1.1 billion, according to Bloomberg. During the same period the year prior, the company reportedly lost $143.7 […]

PitchBook News & Analysis driven by the PitchBook Platform By Priyamvada Mathur March 11, 2020   Morgan Stanley’s acquisition of E-Trade is one of the first deals known to mention the coronavirus in its terms. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images News) The coronavirus epidemic has begun forcing dealmakers to rethink how to manage risk in mergers and acquisitions. […]

TED LIU MARCH 5, 2020  PRIVATE EQUITY DEALS, QUEBEC, INDUSTRIAL AND MANUFACTURING  PE ADD-ON Walter Surface Technologies, a portfolio company of ONCAP and a leader in surface treatment technologies, has acquired Aerochem from founders MIchel Caron, Vincent Houde and Yvon Carrier. Aerochem will continue to operate under its own brand. The transaction is effective immediately, and activities for […]

The president of Hydroserre Mirabel, Sylvain Terrault, has announced the acquisition of Les Serres Lefort. The latter had been placed under the protection of the Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act (R.S.C., 1985, c. C-36) a few months ago. Many discussions were required with all parties involved to arrive at this conclusion. In the agro-food world and political circles, many […]

PitchBook   Thyssenkrupp headquarters in Essen, Germany (Michael Gottschalk/Stringer/Getty Images News)   A monthslong bidding war over elevators finally has a winner. German industrial giant Thyssenkrupp said Thursday that it will sell its elevator business to a group backed by private equity firms Advent International and Cinven. Abu Dhabi Investment Authority and German investor RAG Foundation were also part of the winning consortium. […]

February 25, 2020 8:06 AM EST Mondelēz International (Nasdaq: MDLZ) today announced an agreement to acquire a significant majority interest in Give & Go, a North American leader in fully-finished sweet baked goods and owners of the famous “two-bite”® brand and the “Create-A-Treat”® brand known for cookie and gingerbread house decorating kits. Give & Go is being sold by funds […]

  B&G Foods Acquires Producer of Frozen Plant-based Goods Farmwise February 20, 2020 Companies & Portraits, Hot Off The Vegan Press ©Farmwise European Newsdesk Bloch & Guggenheimer, known as B&G Foods, Inc., a multibillion dollar company which owns several brands including Green Giant and Back to Nature, announces it has acquired Farmwise LLC, creator of Veggie Fries®, Veggie Tots® and Veggie Rings®. […]

Supremex buying Royal Envelope for $27.4 million The Canadian Press Envelopes. Image courtesy of Unsplash. MONTREAL — Supremex Inc. says it has acquired Royal Envelope, an envelope manufacturer and printer in Ontario and Quebec, for $27.4 million. Royal Envelope was founded in 1989 by Peter Bowles and Lou Tucci. The company had approximately $30 million […]

Published: Feb 13, 2020 6:01 a.m. ET Getty ImagesA pair of designer Golden Goose sneakers (Photo by Daniel Zuchnik/Getty Images) By LINASAIGOL Golden Goose, the Italian luxury sneaker brand worn by celebrities including Taylor Swift and Selena Gomez, has been snapped up by private-equity firm Permira in a deal worth around €1.3 billion ($1.09 billion), […]

PitchBook PitchBook Platform (Scott Olson/Getty Images North America)   Sycamore Partners, a retail-focused private equity firm, is closing in on a deal to acquire Victoria’s Secret from Ohio-based retail conglomerate L Brands that could be announced as early as this week, according to CNBC. The Wall Street Journal reported last month that the two sides were discussing a deal […]

‘Revenue is now at negligible levels across the entire store network in Greater China’ A label displays a temperature rating on a parka, inside the new Canada Goose Holdings Inc. store in Montreal, Quebec, CanadaChristinne Muschi/Bloomberg By Victor Ferreira February 7, 2020 12:54 PM EST Inside Canada Goose’s new store that has a room that […]

Driven by the PitchBook Platform By James Thorne February 5, 2020 Investor skepticism toward fast-growing, unprofitable startups has claimed a new victim. Casper has taken one of the largest IPO haircuts of the last 20 years, recording a 56% drop in valuation from its most recent VC funding round. The direct-to-consumer mattress and bedding startup priced its […]

News & Analysis    driven by the PitchBook Platform By Kevin Dowd January 30, 2020 Apollo Global Management chairman and founder Leon Black (left), with his wife, Debra Black, and businessman Robert Tuttle in 2017. (Dia Dipasupil/Getty Images) Apollo Global Management reported a major year-over-year increase in income, and its distributable earnings easily outstripped consensus analyst forecasts. But […]

News & Analysis   driven by the PitchBook Platform By Adam Lewis January 29, 2020   Barstool Sports fans hold up a sign at the PGA Tour Championship at Atlanta’s East Lake Golf Club in 2018. (Sam Greenwood/Getty Images Sport) Over the past few years, the digital media landscape has become increasingly bleak, with layoffs across […]

  PitchBook January 28, 2020 (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)   When Forever 21 filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in September and announced plans to shutter up to a third of its US locations, the shopping mall staple became another casualty of the so-called retail apocalypse. Now, the Los Angeles-based company that helped clothe a generation of trendy […]