The middle market continues to be the sweet spot for private equity deals as Quadrangle Group LLC announced a deal to purchase Greenfield Online Inc. for the bargain price of $426 million.
Quadrangle plans to take Greenfield Online
private at $15.50 per share
in cash, giving shareholders in the Internet consumer survey-taking
company a roughly 17% premium over the closing share price of $13.28 on
June 13. Nevertheless, shareholders may not be too pleased with
the buyout offer since shares of Greenfield traded as high as $18.49 in
June 2007.
The Greenfield transaction will be financed by a combination
of equity
provided by Quadrangle and debt, for which Quadrangle has already
received financing commitments from undisclosed sources. One of the
primary reasons that dealmaking in the middle market has continued to
be robust for buyout shops is their ability to get debt financing
commitments from banks in spite of the credit crunch.
- George White
Read Greenfield Online press release
Comments
Steve Rattner is the latest President Obama appointee who is under fire. Steve Rattner, selected to oversee the automobile industry as the Car czar, of sorts, was the head of the Quadrangle Group, an investment firm that is under SEC investigation. He is alleged to have agreed to finance distribution of a film called Chooch, an Americanized Italian term for a person of questionable intellect, in what seems to be a pay for play scheme in which he got control of a New York based pension fund. Maybe he did it for debt consolidation, or perhaps he was a chooch himself. Regardless, Steve Rattner would get quick payday loan to make the Chooch scandal go away.