ARDIAN enters into exclusive negotiations to support REVIMA, a major player in the aerospace MRO sector, in its development alongside Argos Wityu

Ardian

Paris, January, 16, 2019 – Ardian, a world leading private investment house announces that it is in exclusive talks to acquire a majority stake in Revima, a leading MRO (Maintenance, Repair & Overhaul) solutions provider for aircraft equipment, from private equity firm, Argos Wityu. Following the transaction, Olivier Legrand, President of the Group, and Argos Wityu will reinvest alongside Ardian. This transaction is subject to approval from the antitrust authorities as well as the opinion of the works council.

Founded in 1952, Revima is an independent company which has become a leader in the maintenance, repair and overhaul of commercial transport aircraft equipment. The group is well-known for its expertise in the maintenance of auxiliary power units (APU) and landing gears for regional, medium and long-haul aircraft. The company, which has c.750 employees, realized revenues of more than €280 million in 2018, showing double digit growth for several years.

Revima is active in a fast-growing market driven by the continued increase of aircrafts in service worldwide. The group is ideally positioned to continue this development following investment in its French site, the construction of a new industrial site in Thailand which will be operational in 2020, and the pursuit of a bolt-on acquisition strategy. In this regard, Revima is currently in exclusive negotiations for two acquisitions aimed at strengthening its skillsets in repairing engine parts and in the field of advanced predictive maintenance.

Yann Bak, Managing Director at Ardian Buyout, said: “We are very pleased to be associated with the teams at Revima, a fast-growing company positioned in a very promising niche market. We will use our experience and network to expand the group’s international presence and further accelerate its commercial development.”

Olivier Legrand, President and CEO of Revima added: “Our rapid development these last years and the existing and future opportunities for both internal and external growth make us particularly enthusiastic about Revima’s prospects. We are delighted with Ardian’s investment alongside Argos Wityu, as we share common values and entrepreneurial cultures. Our priority is for Revima to become a global player, expanding its skills and know-how into new areas, and be closer to its customers.”

Gilles Mougenot, partner at Argos Wityu concluded: “Revima perfectly illustrates a situation where we helped position the company into new areas of growth. The objective we set ourselves in 2015 was to simplify the shareholder structure while opening it up to employees, help build a supportive management team, and from 2017, invest significantly in the business, notably internationally.”

ABOUT REVIMA

Revima is a leading independent MRO (Maintenance, Repair & Overhaul) solutions provider, specialized in APUs, Engine Parts and Landing Gears, for civil and military aircraft through five dedicated services: Repair & Overhaul, Engine Parts Repair, Material Solutions, Fleet Management and Leasing.
With committed and passionate employees across locations in France, Asia, North America and the Middle East, Revima boasts over 60 years of MRO expertise. Revima supports aircraft operators, lessors, and repair stations worldwide, is an EASA & FAA Part 145 certified organization, and has approvals from numerous agencies.

ABOUT ARDIAN

Ardian is a world-leading private investment house with assets of US$82bn managed or advised in Europe, the Americas and Asia. The company is majority-owned by its employees. It keeps entrepreneurship at its heart and focuses on delivering excellent investment performance to its global investor base.
Through its commitment to shared outcomes for all stakeholders, Ardian’s activities fuel individual, corporate and economic growth around the world.
Holding close its core values of excellence, loyalty and entrepreneurship, Ardian maintains a truly global network, with more than 550 employees working from fifteen offices across Europe (Frankfurt, Jersey, London, Luxembourg, Madrid, Milan, Paris and Zurich), the Americas (New York, San Francisco and Santiago) and Asia (Beijing, Singapore, Tokyo and Seoul). It manages funds on behalf of around 750 clients through five pillars of investment expertise: Fund of Funds, Direct Funds, Infrastructure, Real Estate and Private Debt.

ABOUT ARGOS WITYU

Argos Wityu is an independent European private equity group supporting management buyouts of medium sized companies and has offices in Brussels, Frankfurt, Geneva, Luxembourg, Milan and Paris.
Argos Wityu funds take majority stakes between €10m and €100m in companies with revenues from €20m to €600m.
Our investment philosophy aims at creating value through business transformation and growth, instead of financial leverage, and bringing solutions to complex situations: MBI, spin-offs, strategic repositioning, shareholding conflicts… We work in close relationship with management teams, with a strong sense of transparency, trust, entrepreneurship and social responsibility.
Argos Wityu is a member of Invest Europe as well as national associations in France (France Invest), Italy (AIFI), Switzerland (SECA) and BVA (Belgium). Argos Wityu SAS is regulated by the AMF and is AIFMD compliant.

LIST OF PARTICIPANTS

Ardian: Yann Bak, Alexandra Goltsova, Benjamin Witcher, Maxime Debost
M&A advisors: Wil Consulting (Jacques Ittah), Alantra (Franck Portais)
Legal and tax advisors: Weil, Gotshal & Manges ((David Aknin, Guillaume Bonnard and Come Wirz (corporate), Edouard de Lamy (fiscal), James Clarke (financing))
Commercial and strategic DD: Archery (Marc Durance, Thibault Espinosa), Oliver Wyman (David Stuart)
Financial DD: KPMG (Florent Steck, Stephane Kuster)

Argos Wityu: Gilles Mougenot, Thomas Ribéreau, Pierre Dumas
M&A: Canaccord Genuity (Olivier Dardel, Lucas Vuillemin, Mohamed Sagou)
Legal advisors: Mayer Brown (Thomas Philippe, Clotilde Billat) & Xavier Jaspar
Financial DD: Eight Advisory (Eric Demuyt, Jean-Sébastien Rabus, Victor Heilweck)
Commercial and strategic DD: Emerton (Sébastien Plessis, Jean-Edmond Coutris)
Tax advisors: Arsène Taxand (Brice Picard)

Management advisors:
Legal advisors: Jeausserand Audouard (Alexandre Dejardin, Elodie Cavazza, Faustine Paoluzzo)
Tax advisors: Jeausserand Audouard (Jérémie Jeausserand, Carole Furst, Charlotte Elkoun)

PRESS CONTACTS

REVIMA
C/O CMYK & CO
CYNTHIA JORDAN
cynthia@cmykandco.com
Tel: + 33 6 86 03 97 95
ARDIAN
Headland
TOM JAMES
tjames@headlandconsultancy.co.uk
Tel: +44 207 3675 240
ARGOS WITYU
toBnext
ANTOINETTE DARPY
adarpy@tobnext.com
Tel: +33 6 72 95 07 92

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Funds advised by Apax Partners invest USD 200 million in Fractal Analytics

Apax

Investment will accelerate Fractal’s path to a $1 billion-revenue company in the AI space

New York, London & Mumbai, January 16, 2019: Funds advised by Apax Partners (the “Apax Funds”) have today announced a definitive agreement to invest USD 200m for a significant minority stake in Fractal Analytics, a global provider of AI to Fortune 500 clients. The transaction, which consists of a secondary stake acquired from existing shareholders and a primary investment into the business, is expected to close by February 2019.

Founded in 2000 with the vision of powering every human decision in the enterprise, Fractal Analytics is a strategic analytics & AI partner to the most admired Fortune 500 companies globally. The company will use the investment by the Apax Funds to accelerate growth, both organically and through M&A, and to invest further in AI products and research.

Srikanth Velamakanni, Co-founder, Group Chief Executive and Executive Vice-Chairman of Fractal Analytics, said: “We are making progress on our goal to build a $1 billion-revenue company in the AI space thanks to our relentless focus on serving Fortune 500 companies globally in enabling an AI-led digital transformation in their businesses. We have been fortunate to have the backing of supportive investors in Khazanah Nasional, TA Associates and Mr. Gulu Mirchandani in this journey. We are excited about our new partnership with Apax Partners, who have an enviable track record of building scaled new-age tech services companies.”

Pranay Agrawal, Co-founder and CEO of Fractal Analytics, said: “The demand for AI is surging across the enterprise. Our AI solutions and globally-recognized team of experts empower these organizations to realize and maximize their full potential. The investment from the Apax Funds will accelerate our ability to scale and meet this rising demand globally. It also establishes Fractal Analytics as one of the world’s most well-funded AI providers.”

Rohan Haldea, Partner at Apax Partners, said: “The data and analytics sector is attractive and growing rapidly as companies increasingly see it as a core strategic function of their business. We are delighted to partner with Fractal Analytics who are extremely well-regarded in this space due to their cutting-edge advanced analytics and AI capabilities which help their blue-chip client base solve complex problems. Srikanth and Pranay have done an excellent job building a differentiated company with a clear vision. We look forward to working with them to scale the business further.”

Shashank Singh, Partner at Apax Partners, said: “We are keen to partner with successful companies, like Fractal Analytics, that have become global leaders. Fractal’s strong culture, which fosters employee engagement and innovation, has played a significant role in driving its success. Notably, its ability to attract high-quality data science and engineering talent has allowed the company to stay at the forefront of the rapidly-evolving analytics space.”

Chinta Bhagat, Head of Khazanah in India and chairman of Fractal, said “Khazanah is proud to have been Fractal’s largest shareholder during a period in which it scaled up rapidly into a leading global analytics player. In addition to providing growth capital, Khazanah worked closely with Fractal on streamlining the board, supporting product innovations, and bringing Fractal’s capabilities to Khazanah’s portfolio companies. We wish everyone at Fractal the very best as it embarks on its next stage of growth, and look forward to being supportive partners over the coming years”.

The Apax Funds investment in Fractal Analytics will be its 12th in the Tech Services space globally. Apax has significant experience in partnering with and growing technology services business, such as ThoughtWorks, GlobalLogic, Zensar and EVRY, and will leverage this expertise to help Fractal scale further.

About Fractal Analytics

Founded in 2000, Fractal Analytics is a strategic analytics partner to the most admired Fortune 500 companies globally and helps them power every human decision in the enterprise by bringing analytics & AI to the decision-making process.

Fractal has built several cutting-edge AI product startups within its ecosystem across industries, including:

 – Qure.ai to transform how radiologists make diagnostics’ decisions. Qure’s qXR solution is the first AI-based Chest X-Ray interpretation tool to receive CE certification. Qure’s recently-launched qER solution for interpreting head CT scans has been proven to have more than 95% accuracy in identifying abnormalities.

 – Cuddle.ai to transform how executives make tactical and operational decisions. Cuddle automatically alerts users on what they need to know about their business and allows them to ask questions about their business in natural language.

 – Trial Run to improve strategic and operational decisions. Trial Run is a cloud-based experimentation platform that enables companies across verticals to test, measure and refine strategies before rollout.

Fractal has more than 1,200 consultants spread across 15 global locations including the United States, UK and India. Fractal has been featured as a leader in the Customer Analytics Service Providers Wave™ 2017 by Forrester Research, a Great Place to Work by The Economic Times in partnership with the Great Place to Work® Institute and recognized as a ‘Cool Vendor’ and a ‘Vendor to Watch’ by Gartner. For more information: www.fractalanalytics.com

About Apax Partners

Apax Partners is a leading global private equity advisory firm. Over its more than 35-year history, Apax Partners has raised and advised funds with aggregate commitments of over $50 billion. The Apax Funds invest in companies across four global sectors of Tech & Telco, Services, Healthcare and Consumer. These funds provide long-term equity financing to build and strengthen world-class companies. For more information see: www.apax.com.

Media Contacts

For Fractal Analytics:

Global Media: Sharmila Shah | sharmila.shah@fractalanalytics.com

USA Media: Chris Harihar | chris@crenshawcomm.com

For Apax Partners:

Global Media: Andrew Kenny, Apax | +44 20 7 872 6371 | andrew.kenny@apax.com

USA Media: Todd Fogarty, Kekst | +1 212-521 4854 | todd.fogarty@kekst.com

UK Media: James Madsen / Matthew Goodman, Greenbrook | +44 20 7952 2000 | apax@greenbrookpr.com

 

Notes to Editors

London-headquartered Apax Partners (www.apax.com), and Paris-headquartered Apax Partners (www.apax.fr) had a shared history but are separate, independent private equity firms.

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HEPACO Acquires PetroChem Recovery Services

Gryphon Investors

Transaction Represents the 4th Acquisition Completed Under Gryphon’s Ownership

Charlotte, NC – January 18, 2019 —

HEPACO, LLC (“HEPACO”), a leading provider of environmental and emergency response services, announced today that it has acquired PetroChem Recovery Services, Inc. (“PetroChem” or “the Company”) from Succession Capital Partners. Headquartered in Norfolk, VA, PetroChem is a leading environmental services provider for transportation, industrial, and government clients. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. HEPACO is majority-owned by San Francisco-based Gryphon Investors, a leading middle market private equity firm. This transaction represents the fourth acquisition completed under Gryphon’s ownership.

HEPACO Chief Executive Officer Ken Smith said, “We are thrilled to announce the acquisition of PetroChem and welcome their team to HEPACO.” Mr. Smith added, “We look forward to working with the PetroChem team to enhance our emergency response and environmental service offerings and better serve our customers.” HEPACO Chairman and Gryphon Operating Partner Phil Petrocelli said, “We are excited to continue our successful acquisition strategy with the PetroChem transaction. We anticipate continuing HEPACO’s expansion through new geographies and greater coverage density in attractive markets.”

Succession Capital Partners Managing Partner Matt Malone stated, “We have very much enjoyed working with the talented team at PetroChem and are delighted to announce the Company’s sale to HEPACO, which we believe is the ideal partner to facilitate PetroChem’s next phase of growth for both its customers and employees.”

Katten Muchin Rosenman LLP acted as legal advisor to HEPACO, while Queen Saenz + Schutz PLLC represented PetroChem.

About HEPACO
HEPACO (www.hepaco.com) is a leading provider of emergency response, environmental remediation, maritime services, wastewater treatment, and other industrial services across a diversified group of end markets including rail, oil & gas, transportation, power & utility, and manufacturing. The company has a broad geographic footprint more than 40 locations in the Mid-Atlantic, Midwest, Northeast, and Southeast United States and offers a three-hour or less response time within its footprint and on a national basis through its managed network of third-party emergency response vendors. HEPACO provides services on both an emergency response and planned basis.

About PetroChem Recovery Services 
Based in Norfolk, VA, PetroChem (www.petrochemrecovery.com) serves as a full service environmental consulting and remediation company in the Mid-Atlantic region to large industrial, government agencies, small business, and residential clients. PetroChem provides emergency response to spill incidents in addition to hazardous material stabilization and packaging, facility decontamination, and hazardous waste transportation and disposal.

About Gryphon Investors
Based in San Francisco, Gryphon Investors (www.gryphoninvestors.com) is a leading private equity firm focused on profitably growing and competitively enhancing middle-market companies in partnership with experienced management teams. The firm has managed more than $4.5 billion of equity investments and capital since its founding in 1997. Gryphon targets making equity investments of $50 million to $200 million in portfolio companies with sales ranging from approximately $100 million to $500 million. Gryphon prioritizes investment opportunities where it can form strong partnerships with owners and executives to build leading companies, utilizing Gryphon’s capital, specialized professional resources, and operational expertise.

Contacts

 

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Verdane invests in leading eSourcing company Scanmarket

Verdane Capital

Verdane Edda has invested in Scanmarket, a cloud-based SaaS suite within strategic sourcing software. The goal of the investment is to strengthen Scanmarket’s position as a best of breed solution within eSourcing and to build a leading international Source-2-Contract (S2C) software company that helps procurement professionals in achieving cost savings.

Founded in 1999, Scanmarket is a top-rated niche player targeting medium and large companies to help digitalise their procurement function in order to improve efficiency and provide cost savings. On average, Scanmarket’s platform helps achieve cost savings between 10-15% for procurement professionals. Based in Solbjerg, Aarhus in Denmark, Scanmarket supports procurement teams with purchasing, planning, assessment and performance management through a Source-to-Contract SaaS suite. Its client portfolio of more than 120 customers includes automobile manufacturer Nissan, film studio Paramount Pictures, facility service company ISS and grocery retailer COOP. Spread across 29 countries primarily in North America and Europe, Scanmarket has employees in Denmark, the UK, the US, Germany, the Netherlands and Ukraine. The global market for Strategic Sourcing Applications is estimated at USD 1.5 billion by Gartner, a leading research and advisory company.

“Scanmarket is already a fast-growing global market leader in a strategic procurement software niche, and I believe Verdane the ideal partner for us to further accelerate growth”, says Scanmarket founder Ole Nielsen.

“This partnership allows us to accelerate our investments into product development and marketing, so that even more companies can benefit from the cost savings generated by our clients from adopting our platform”, adds CEO Betina Nygaard.

“Procurement is still relatively undigitalised compared to for example marketing. In the transition to cloud-based software for procurement professionals, efficient platforms like Scanmarket’s are key to reaping the benefits of engaging with multiple suppliers, to increase productivity and to generate cost savings when using for example eAuctions as part of the engagement. We look forward to working together with the team at Scanmarket in realising the company’s growth potential”, comments Martin Welna, investment director at Verdane’s Danish office.

Scanmarket joins a Verdane roster of over 170 software and consumer internet investments made over the last 14 years. CEO Betina Nygaard and CCO Ole Nielsen will reinvest in Scanmarket to retain an ownership stake at approximately 10%, with Verdane Edda holding the remaining 90%. Both Nygaard and Nielsen will remain with the company to play an active role in its future development.

****

For more information, please contact:

Jonathan Bui, Communications Manager, Verdane: +46 76 27 28 100

Betina Nygaard, CEO, Scanmarket: +45 22 52 83 24

Ole Nielsen, CCO, Scanmarket: +45 20 12 30 09

About Scanmarket

Scanmarket is a market-leading global strategic sourcing platform that since 1999 has delivered superior bottom-line results in savings, transparency and efficiency to hundreds of organizations globally. We achieve this by dramatically increasing adoption and volume through a proven cloud-based platform that is easy to use, easy to get expert support, and easy to do business with. Scanmarket has 43 employees working out of offices in Solbjerg, London, Hamburg, Amsterdam and Atlanta. For more information, please visit www.scanmarket.com

About Verdane

Verdane funds provide flexible growth capital to fast-growing software, consumer internet, energy or high-technology industry businesses, through both minority and majority investments in individual companies and portfolios. Verdane funds act as ambitious, active, and long-term owners, helping management teams and companies accelerate and sustain growth by leveraging the Verdane advisory team’s unrivalled technology capabilities and proven track record in driving business value. Verdane funds’ and SPVs’ current portfolio includes EasyPark, inRiver, HR Manager and Freespee. Verdane funds have attracted SEK 12 billion in total commitments from investors. Verdane Advisory Group has 39 employees working out of offices in Copenhagen, Helsinki, London, Oslo and Stockholm. For more information, please visit www.verdane.com

Categories: News

Personio raises $40m Series B funding

Northzone

German HR and recruiting platform Personio raises $40M Series B led by Index

Personio Management Team_high_res_(3_founders_on the left)

Personio, the German HR and recruiting platform, has raised $40 million in a Series B funding. Leading the round is London-based Index Ventures, with participation from existing investors Northzone and Rocket Internet’s Global Founders.

Founded in 2015, Munich-based Personio  has set out to build an “HR operating system” for small and medium-sized companies (SMEs) ranging from 10 to 2,000 employees. The cloud-based software is designed to power all of a company’s HR and recruiting processes, either via the product’s own core functionality or through its ability to integrate with third-party software.

“We believe in the benefit of a holistic HR solution that covers the entire employee life cycle, while its functionalities need to adapt to individual customer requirements and processes,” Personio co-founder and CEO Hanno Renner tells me.

“That being said, we distinguish between the bread-and-butter HR activities which every company needs to do (e.g. recruiting, on-boarding, time-off management, payroll etc.) and those that are either industry-specific or rather-nice-to-haves.”

Examples include hardware-based time tracking and employee engagement, respectively. “We focus our efforts on providing a best-in-class experience for what we consider bread-and-butter HR,” adds Renner. “For more specific requirements, we let our customers choose from a growing number of integrated vertical solutions based on their needs. Data will be synced so Personio acts as the system of record for all HR information and information only needs to be entered once.”

In addition to “out of the box” third-party software integrations, Personio’s claim to offer an HR operating system is backed up by the company’s open API, which is designed to cover various use cases where accessing data that is stored in Personio can add further value to customers. This includes building something as simple as a Slack bot using Personio data, to connecting Personio to a company’s data-warehouse or deeper integrations with internal systems.

More broadly, Renner says this holistic approach, coupled with Personio’s workflow automation that aims to cut down on time wasted on repetitive tasks, is not only resonating with HR managers and recruiters who typically use the product for several hours per day, but is also finding use with managers, executives and other employees. The end result is that HR and recruitment processes can become much more distributed across a company.

To that end, Personio says its Series B funding will be used to help the company attempt to become Europe’s leading provider of human resources software for SMEs. It boasts more than 1,000 clients in 35 countries, seeing more than 150,000 employees and several hundred thousand applicants currently being managed within Personio.

“We believe that now is the right timing to actively expand into further regions, and the funding as well as Index expertise will certainly help in making that move successful,” adds the Personio CEO. “Apart from that, we consider ourselves a product-driven company and hence want to continue to strongly invest into building the best product for our customers, which will mean significantly growing our product and engineering team and potentially even opening a new office to facilitate hiring.”

Categories: News

3i announces sale of OneMed generating proceeds of c. £100 million

3I

 

3i Group plc (“3i”), and funds managed by 3i, have entered into a sale and purchase agreement to sell their investment in OneMed, the leading medical supplies distributor in Northern Europe, to Nalka Invest AB.

Proceeds to 3i will be c. £100m. The transaction is expected to complete in March 2019, subject to customary antitrust approvals.

3i invested in OneMed in 2011. During 3i’s ownership, the company successfully strengthened its market positions in Sweden, Denmark and Finland and built its international footprint through three strategic acquisitions in the Netherlands and a major expansion in Norway.

For further information, contact:
3i Group plc
Silvia Santoro
Investor enquiries
Kathryn van der Kroft
Media enquiries
Tel: +44 20 7975 3258
Email: silvia.santoro@3i.com
Tel: +44 20 7975 3021
Email: kathryn.vanderkroft@3i.com

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Altas Partners Completes Sale of NSC Minerals

Altas Partners

Toronto, ON – January 17, 2019 – Altas Partners today announced that it has completed the sale of NSC Minerals Ltd. (“NSC” or the “Company”), a market-leading provider of salt products in Western Canada and the North Central United States. Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

NSC is a leading producer of salt products to provincial, state, and municipal governments, contractors, and industrial customers. The Company offers a wide range of bulk, industrial, and packaged products used in critical applications such as road de-icing.

“Altas was a great partner to our management team,” said Neil Cameron, President and CEO of NSC Minerals. “Consistent with their approach, Altas has supported investments that have positioned NSC for long-term success. We are grateful for the insight they have provided, including supporting key strategic decisions and areas of investment across the business, and thank them for their partnership.”

“It has been a privilege to partner with Malcolm Leggett, NSC’s visionary founder, CEO Neil Cameron and the entire NSC team over the past many years,” commented Andrew Sheiner, Founder and Managing Partner of Altas Partners. “Through a collaborative partnership, we were able to enhance operational performance considerably, driven by logistics optimization and strategic capital investment throughout NSC’s network. We wish the NSC team all the best as they continue to build this wonderful business in the years to come.”

About NSC Minerals Ltd.
Founded in 1988 and based in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, NSC is a market-leading provider of salt for de-icing, industrial, and agricultural applications. NSC distributes product through a best-in-class logistics network to customers including provincial, state, and municipal governments, contractors, and industrial customers in Western Canada and the North Central United States.

For more information: https://nscminerals.ca

About Altas Partners
Altas Partners is an investment firm with a long-term orientation focused on acquiring significant interests in high-quality, market-leading businesses in partnership with outstanding management teams. Key elements of the firm’s approach include responsible capital structures, active ownership through strategic and operational support and an emphasis on sustainable value creation. Altas invests on behalf of endowments, foundations, public pension funds and other institutional investors.

For more information: https://www.altas.com

Media Contacts:

Altas Partners
Sard Verbinnen & Co.
Andrew Cole / Julie Rudnick
U.S.: +1 (212) 687 8080

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Kissner Group Holdings Acquires NSC Minerals from Altas Partners

Overland Park, Kan. and Toronto, ON – January 17, 2019 – Kissner Group Holdings LP, the parent company of a leading bulk salt, specialty packaged salt and evaporated salt producer, Kissner, today announced that it has acquired NSC Minerals Ltd. (“NSC” or the “Company”), a market-leading provider of salt products in Western Canada and the North Central United States, from an investor group led by Altas Partners. Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

NSC is a leading producer of salt and calcium chloride products to provincial, state, and municipal governments, contractors, and industrial customers. The Company offers a wide range of bulk, industrial, and packaged products used in critical applications such as road de-icing.
NSC will continue to operate under its existing brand as a subsidiary of Kissner. The Company’s production, packaging and storage facilities in Canada and the U.S. will remain fully operational.
“NSC is a well-run and highly complementary addition to our growing platform and solidifies Kissner’s position as one of North America’s premier, multi-regional salt companies,” said Mark Demetree, Executive Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Kissner Group Holdings LP. “With its strong position in the Western Canada highway de-icing salt market and growth potential in the calcium chloride market, NSC expands our geographic presence in Canada and enhances our financial scale and flexibility with non-cyclical, recurring revenue. I look forward to welcoming the talented NSC team to Kissner as we pursue our next phase of growth together.”
“We are pleased to continue to help expand Kissner’s geographic footprint and aggressively support the company’s management team in their growth efforts,” said Jeffrey Siegal, Partner at Metalmark Capital. “We look forward to our continued work with this great company to further its capabilities to deliver exceptional products and service to its customers.”

“It has been a privilege to partner with Malcolm Leggett, NSC’s visionary founder, CEO Neil Cameron and the entire NSC team over the past many years,” commented Andrew Sheiner, Founder and Managing Partner of Altas Partners. “Through a collaborative partnership, we were able to enhance operational performance considerably, driven by logistics optimization and strategic capital investment throughout NSC’s network. We wish the NSC team all the best as they continue to build this wonderful business in the years to come.”
The transaction closed January 16, 2019.

About NSC Minerals Ltd.
Founded in 1988 and based in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, NSC is a market-leading provider of salt for de-icing, industrial, and agricultural applications. NSC distributes product through a best-in-class logistics network to customers including provincial, state, and municipal governments, contractors, and industrial customers in Western Canada and the North Central United States.
For more information: https://nscminerals.ca/
About Kissner Group Holdings LP
Kissner Group Holdings LP is the parent company of Kissner and is owned by Metalmark Capital Holdings LLC (“Metalmark Capital”), a private equity firm, Silvertree‐KMC II LP, a venture between Silverhawk Capital Partners and Demetree Salt, LLC, and the Kissner management team.

About Kissner
Headquartered in Overland Park, Kansas, Kissner is a leading, vertically integrated bulk salt, specialty packaged salt and evaporated salt producer focused on governmental and commercial customers in the Great Lakes, Great Plains, Midwest and East Coast regions and Ontario province. Kissner owns and operates two rock salt mines located in Detroit, Michigan and Lyons, Kansas, as well as an evaporated salt business (US Salt) which has a salt refinery in Watkins Glen, New York.
For more information: http://www.kissner.com

About Metalmark Capital

Metalmark Capital is a leading private equity firm that seeks to build long-term value through active and collaborative partnerships with business owners, founders, and executives. The firm focuses its investment activity in growth industrials, natural resources, agribusiness, and healthcare. Metalmark Capital manages funds with $3.7 billion in aggregate capital commitments. For more information: http://www.metalmarkcapital.com About Silvertree-KMC II LP Silvertree-KMC II LP is a special purpose vehicle, led by Silverhawk Capital Partners and Demetree Salt, LLC. Silverhawk Capital Partners is an independent investment group established in 2005 to invest in management buyouts and other private equity transactions in the growth industrial, energy/natural resources and business service sectors. The partners of Silverhawk have invested as a team and operated businesses since 1989, and have successfully deployed more than $1.3 billion of capital at high rates of return. For more information: http://www.silverhawkcapitalpartners.com Demetree Salt, LLC is a family investment office.

About Altas Partners
Altas Partners is an investment firm with a long-term orientation focused on acquiring significant interests in high-quality, market-leading businesses in partnership with outstanding management teams. Key elements of the firm’s approach include responsible capital structures, active ownership through strategic and operational support and an emphasis on sustainable value creation. Altas invests on behalf of endowments, foundations, public pension funds and other institutional investors. For more information: http://www.altas.com

Media Contacts:
Altas Partners Kissner Group Holdings LP Metalmark Capital
Sard Verbinnen & Co. Mike Lenox Sard Verbinnen & Co.
Andrew Cole / Julie Rudnick U.S.: +1 (913) 713 0630 Warren Rizzi
U.S.: +1 (212) 687 8080 U.S.: +1 (212) 687 8080

Categories: News

GP Bullhound advises Method Communications on its sale to Chime Communications Group

Gp Bullhound

GP Bullhound acted as exclusive financial advisor to Method Communications, a technology PR and marketing agency based in San Francisco and Salt Lake City, on its sale to Chime Communications Group, the global sport, entertainment and communications group. Through the acquisition, Method will become part of the Chime Specialist Group, a family of best-in-class agencies that are challenging traditional agency models.

David Parkinson, CEO of Method, commented: “We are thrilled to be part of Chime and anticipate a phenomenal partnership as we move forward. GP Bullhound’s deep expertise and global network in the digital marketing sector proved invaluable in helping us find the right partner and was instrumental in making this process a success.”

Adam Birnbaum, Director at GP Bullhound, commented: “It was a pleasure to have advised Method in this strategic transaction with Chime. Method’s unique expertise and approach has enabled them to become one of the most recognized technology agencies in the U.S. and will fit very well within Chime. Method’s impressive client roster of leading technology companies will benefit from the breadth of Chime’s capabilities.”

The transaction is further testament to GP Bullhound’s expertise in advising category leaders in the digital services sector, with more than 20 transactions completed in the last 24 months including the sales of Oliver to You & Mr Jones, Namics to Merkle, Kepler Group to KYU, Solita to Apax Digital, and Karmarama to Accenture, among many others.

Inquiries
For inquiries please contact: Adam Birnbaum, Director, at Adam.Birnbaum@gpbullhound.com

About GP Bullhound
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Vistara Capital Partners is proud to announce our investment in CoolIT Systems.

Vistara

Vistara Capital Partners is proud to announce our investment in CoolIT Systems, the leader in modular liquid cooling technology targeted at data centers. This investment, made by the Vistara Technology Growth Fund III LP, is expected to bolster CoolIT’s anticipated growth as the demand for liquid cooling technology continues to rise.

CALGARY, AL – CoolIT Systems, the world leader in modular, scalable data center liquid cooling technology, has partnered with Vistara Capital Partners as the company expands production capacity to service new and existing global data center customers.

Vistara’s investment was made by the recently announced Vistara Technology Growth Fund III LP, a USD$100 million fund focused on providing flexible and tailored debt financing for technology companies across North America.

“With our order backlog expanding by 400% in the last year, access to additional capital is critical for continued success,” said CoolIT Systems CFO, Peter Calverley. “With the creative financing package provided by Vistara the financial foundation is in place for 2019 to be another year of significant growth in data center liquid cooling sales for CoolIT.”

“CoolIT Systems is at an exciting inflection point, managing a significant expansion of their business as liquid cooling is experiencing accelerated adoption by data center OEMs and operators,” said Vistara Partner, Noah Shipman. “Investment structures that efficiently facilitate growth over time is a hallmark of Vistara. We are thrilled to invest in and support another emerging Canadian technology leader.”

About Vistara Capital Partners

Headquartered in Vancouver BC, Vistara Capital Partners provides highly flexible and tailored technology growth capital for tech companies across North America. Founded, managed, and funded by seasoned technology finance and operating executives, “Vistara” (Sanskrit for “expansion”) is focused on enabling the growth and expansion of its portfolio companies. Additional information is available at www.vistaracapital.com.

About CoolIT Systems

CoolIT Systems specializes in scalable liquid cooling solutions for individual servers through to the world’s most demanding data centers and HPC systems. Through its modular, rack-based Direct Liquid Cooling technology, Rack DCLC™, CoolIT enables dramatic increases in rack densities, component performance and power efficiencies. From Passive Coldplate Loops specifically designed for the latest high TDP processors from Intel, NVIDIA and AMD, to Rack Manifolds and Coolant Distribution Units (CDUs), CoolIT’s reliable technology installs into any server or rack, ensuring ease of adoption and maintenance. For more information about CoolIT Systems and its technology, email or visit https://www.coolitsystems.com/.

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