Luisa Beltran
Three Cities Research may finally sell Garden Ridge after a dozen years.
AEA Investors is in talks to buy Garden Ridge, according to Thomson Reuters LPC and Standard & Poor's LCD. The middle market PE firm is expected to pay $750 million for Garden Ridge and is in the market for a $250 million loan, LCD says. The deal also includes an $80 million revolver and $85 million of mezzanine debt, LCD says. Bank of America Merrill Lynch and UBS are launching the loan, LCD says.
Equity will account for more than half of the financing, while management and Three Cities are rolling over a significant portion of their equity, LCD says. Standard & Poor's says AEA is buying 60% of Garden Ridge.
What a difference three years make.
Today, Google announced it has acquired Zagat Survey. While financial terms weren't disclosed, this would be a major win for Tim and Nina Zagat, who started the company in 1979 as a list of New York restaurant reviews compiled by friends.
The sale is the second time the founders have tried to offload the company. In 2008, the "Burgundy Bible" went up for sale and was seeking bids of 20X EBITDA or $200 million. Goldman Sachs was the advisor for the 2008 process.
Zagat, in 2008, was producing around $5 million in cash flow. Several PE firms looked at Zagat but balked at the high price tag, I'm told.
Andrew Trader was named a venture partner with Maveron. Trader, who is based in San Francisco, joined Maveron in 2010 as an Entrepreneur in Residence. He was previously a member of Zynga's founding team.
Bazaarvoice, which is backed by Austin Ventures and Battery Ventures, became the latest unprofitable VC-backed company to file for an IPO. Austin, Texas-based Bazaarvoice filed Friday to raise as much as $86.25 million via an IPO. Morgan Stanley is lead book runner on the deal, which also includes Deutsche Bank and Credit Suisse. Other underwriters […]
Awarepoint Corp. said Wednesday that it has closed $27 million in Series F financing. Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers led the round while Top Tier Capital Partners also invested. Existing investors Cardinal Partners, Venrock, and Jafco Ventures also participated. Awarepoint, of San Diego, provides real-time location systems for U.S. hospitals.
Tapetera said Wednesday that it has secured $2 million in Series A funding led by Silicon Valley investor Terence Garnett. Others participating included salesforce.com, as well as M.R. Rangaswami and David Murphy. San Francisco-based Tapetera develops Apple mobile enterprise apps.
Cleveland Heartlab has closed an $18.4 million Series B round. Excel Venture Management and HealthCare Ventures, both of Boston, led the round. Existing investors also participated.
The value of U.S. tech/telecom M&A has nearly doubled so far in 2011.
There were 1,914 transactions so far this year, valued at a combined $209.9 billion, according to data from Dealogic. This compares to 2,210 deals that occurred in 2010, totaling $107.3 billion.
As expected, bulge bracket firms like Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan dominated the top 10 of U.S. advisors. But some independent boutiques, such as Evercore Partners and Qatalyst Partners, are making major headway.
In fact, of all the top 10 advisors, it is Frank Quattrone's IB that posted the biggest gains. Last week, Qatalyst Partners scored two big deals. The San Francisco IB advised Autonomy which is being sold to HP for $11.72 billion, as well as the $12.94 billion sale of Motorola Mobility Holdings to Google. With both of these deals, Qatalyst vaulted into the top 10 of U.S. tech advisors, Dealogic says.
But Qatalyst isn't the only player in town. Citi, Goldman Sachs and Credit Suisse also posted made major jumps for U.S. tech/telecom advisors, according to Dealogic.
So here's the list of the top 10 U.S. M&A advisors for tech/telecom deals, according to Dealogic. The rankings are as of Aug. 22, 2011.
The big surprise of yesterday's poll was how predictable it turned out.
On Thursday, we asked you which smartphone maker would likely be bought next. The choices were RIM, HTC and Nokia. There’s been lots of speculation that RIM’s problems--poor earnings, layoffs and its inability to make the Blackberry Playbook a healthy competitor to Apple’s iPad--make it a likely takeover target. Apparently, many of our readers agree. Nearly 56% said they expect RIM to be the next smartphone maker to get sold.
HTC, in another surprise, came in second with 22.6% (this surprises me because HTC seems more like a buyer than a seller but I could very easily be wrong). And Nokia wound up third with 21%.
We also asked for some write-in candidates. There were mentions of Samsung as well as Nortel Networks (one jokester even suggested the iPhone would go up for sale. I doubt this but maybe this person knows something we don't).
Till next week.
It's been a busy week for Frank Quattrone's Qatalyst Partners.
Hewlett-Packard late Thursday confirmed reports that it was buying Autonomy, the British software maker, for $10 billion. H.P. also said it was exploring options for its personal computer business.
Qatalyst is one of the advisors for Autonomy, according to Dealbook. Frank Quattrone even hinted that something was coming Thursday when he issued a rare tweet of "Hi!!!"
UPDATE: Quattrone, in another tweet later Thursday, confirmed that Qatalyst was serving as lead advisor on the Autonomy's proposed sale to HP.
The deal is huge for Qatalyst, the boutique investment bank founded by Quattrone in 2008. But Autonomy wouldn't be the biggest deal for Qatalyst. Earlier this week, Google announced it was buying Motorola Mobility Holdings for $40 a share, or $12.5 billion. Qatalyst is also one of Motorola Mobile's advisors.
Officials for Autonomy and HP couldn't be reached for comment.