Company type | Limited partnership |
---|---|
Industry | Investment management |
Predecessor | Soros Private Equity |
Founded | April 2005 |
Headquarters | London and New York City |
Number of locations | London, New York City, Madrid, Frankfurt |
Areas served | North America, Europe |
Key people | Neal Moszkowski (co-chair and co-CEO) Ramez Sousou (co-chair and co-CEO) |
Products | Private equity funds, structured opportunities funds |
AUM | USD$13.7 billion [1] |
Number of employees | 102 [1] |
Website |
www |
TowerBrook Capital Partners, L.P. is an investment management firm [2] [3] headquartered in London and New York City. TowerBrook spun out of Soros Fund Management in 2005 [4] and became known for acquiring majority stakes in companies such as Jimmy Choo. [5] Managing $13.7 billion in a number of private equity funds and structured opportunities funds, [6] TowerBrook listed 30 active investments on its website as of 2020.
TowerBrook Capital Partners was formed as a spin-off of George Soros' equity management firm. [4] TowerBrook's co-founders, Neal Moszkowski and Ramez Sousou, had previously served as co-heads of Soros Fund Management's private equity arm, Soros Private Equity (SPEP); SPEP launched its first fund around 2000. [7] SPEP was also an early investor [8] in companies such as Eircom, [4] CSTV Networks, and Cablecom, which it sold to Liberty Global in 2005. [8] In April 2005, [4] Moszkowski and Sousou spun out SPEP from Soros Fund Management to establish TowerBrook Capital Partners in New York and London. [9]
TowerBrook closed its TowerBrook Investors II LP fund at $1.3 billion in March 2006, [9] with George Soros contributing a significant amount. [10] Later that month, the fund purchased 67% of French engineering company GSE, which had an estimated value of €230 million. [11] In 2006, [12] TowerBrook purchased 75% of the St. Louis Blues National Hockey League team [13] for $150 million, also then purchasing the lease of the Scottrade Center in St. Louis, Missouri. [14] The purchase made TowerBrook "the only private equity firm to own a share in a professional sports team," according to Sports Business Daily. [12] Also in 2006, TowerBrook raised $850 million from the sale of WellCare Health Plans, and a further $160 million from the disposal of Tradedoubler. [7] After acquisition of clothing company Odlo in 2006, [15] in 2007 TowerBrook purchased the designer shoe company Jimmy Choo [10] for £180 million. [16] In 2007, it invested in U.S. company Sound Inpatient Physicians. [17]
In 2008, TowerBrook raised $2.8 billion from investors for its third fund. [10] [18] According to Financial Times, the successful fundraising during a difficult economic period was noted as reflecting TowerBrook's sharp decline in its investing pace during a credit boom, while keeping debt for new investments "below the market average." [10] The fund's first deal was in 2009, when TowerBrook acquired 60% of Autodistribution Group for $139 million, [19] selling the stake six years later to Bain Capital. [20] In 2009, TowerBrook founded Haymarket Financial, or HayFin, initially as a corporate lender for small and medium businesses. Investors, including Sunseeker, Ronald Mourad Cohen, Lord Rothschild, and Future Fund, invested a total of $580 million in HayFin in September 2010, raising the lender's equity to about €1 billion. [21] TowerBrook sold its stake in HayFin in 2017. [22] In 2010, Towerbrook acquired the building company Monier [23] and sold Broadlane Group for $850 million. [24]
TowerBrook purchased the fashion retailer Phase Eight for £80 million in February 2011. [25] Three months later, [26] TowerBrook sold Jimmy Choo, [5] for a reported £500 million. [16] In 2012, TowerBrook sold part of its stake in the St. Louis Blues [14] to a consortium of investors, retaining a stake of around 50%. [27] Also in 2012, TowerBrook acquired a majority interest in the professional coaching business Vistage International. [28] In 2013, Towerbrook acquired scrap refiner Metallum for £295 million [29] and True Religion Apparel for $835 million. [13] That year, the company also sold Rave Cinemas to Cinemark. [30] In early 2013, The Financial Times wrote that TowerBrook was "defying a depressed fundraising market" by raising $3.5 billion for its new fund, [2] TowerBrook Investors IV. [31] Originally targeted at $3 billion, Fund IV became "considerably oversubscribed", receiving subscriptions of over $5 billion. [2]
In 2014, TowerBrook acquired Independent Clinical Services from The Blackstone Group for $408 million. [32] In June of that year, TowerBrook portfolio company Volution Group completed an initial public offering (IPO) on the London Stock Exchange, [33] diluting TowerBrook’s stake from 85% [34] to 61%. [35] In 2015, TowerBrook sold Phase Eight, then valued at £300 million, to the Foschini Group of South Africa, [25] and sold a 10% stake in itself to Wafra Investment Advisory Group "to free up capital to spend on the business." [36] In November 2015 TowerBrook secured over $800 million [37] for its new TowerBrook Structured Opportunities Fund, [38] exceeding its initial target of $600 million. [37] Also in 2015, Towerbrook purchased American Apparel business J.Jill [3] [39] for around $400 million, [40] and acquired a stake in U.S.-based Accretive Health for $200 million. [41] In March 2016, TowerBrook sold the majority of Van Geloven, a Dutch snack maker it had acquired the previous year, to McCain Foods. [42] In April 2016, TowerBrook announced it was partnering with U.S.-based health system Ascension Health Alliance to develop Ascension's healthcare technology business TRIMEDX. [43] By that summer, the firm had raised a total of $9.4 billion from investors in four private equity funds and one structured opportunities fund, designed to allow the firm to make minority investments. [44] [45]
The firm completed eight investments in 2017, [45] including purchasing 47% of the aerospace company Aernova [46] and acquisition of loyalty services business Rewards Network. [47] TowerBrook retained 50% of J.Jill stock when taking it public on the New York Stock Exchange in March 2017. [48] Several months later, True Religion filed for bankruptcy protection, stating that TowerBrook would "swap debt into equity, handing them majority control." [49] The bankruptcy plan was approved by the courts in October 2017, [50] with True Religion's debt cut by $354 million. [48]
In June 2018, $4.25 billion was raised for a new Towerbrook buyout fund, Towerbrook Investors V. $1.05 billion was also raised for a Structured Opportunities Fund. [44] [45] In 2018 and 2019, TowerBrook made significant investments in Validity Finance, [51] GBA Group, [38] Orchid Underwriters [52] and Studio Movie Grill. [6] TowerBrook listed 30 active investments on its website in 2020, among them KeHe Distributors, BevMo!, and OVH. [53] [6] In 2019, Towerbrook became the first "mainstream private-equity shop" to be certified as a B corporation. [54] In October 2019 it was reported that TowerBrook and Ascension Health were co-investing in the hospice company Compassus through Ascension TowerBrook Healthcare Opportunities (ATHO), a new joint venture. [55] In February 2020, the company was researching a sale of Independent Clinical Services. [56]
TowerBrook operates two fund types, private equity and structured opportunities. [44] TowerBrook's website states that its private equity strategy is "based on the focused, proprietary sourcing of selected, control-oriented" investments [57] in large and midsize companies, [44] where the firm has “identified scope for significant further improvement and value creation." [57] The firm's Structured Opportunities Funds make minority investments in a range of businesses, [44] "principally via structured asset and structured equity investments." [57] The firm publishes an annual "Responsible Ownership Report", [58] and is a signatory to the United Nations Principles for Responsible Investment Initiative (PRI). [59] Towerbrook is a certified B Corporation. [54]
TowerBrook is co-headquartered in London, England and New York City. [12] The firm also has offices in Madrid, Spain and Frankfurt, Germany, [57] [60] and a representative office in Amsterdam. [61] It previously had an office in San Francisco, California [62] and also in Munich. [57]
The firm is led by its founders, Neal Moszkowski, and Ramez Sousou, who are its co-chairs and co-CEOs, [13] and are based in New York and London, respectively. [9] TowerBrook's 23-member senior advisory board includes David J. Barger, Daniel Bernard, Anne Bouverot, Dave Checketts, Andrew Feldman, Trevor Fetter, Alan Fishman, Reuben Jeffery III, Marwan Lahoud and Gareth Penny. [63]
The TowerBrook Foundation is a charitable organization established by the partners of the firm in 2006. [64] It has donated to nonprofits such as City Year [65] and Habitat for Humanity. [66]
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