Contact: Brenon Daly
In 2010, it was The Carlyle Group. So far in 2011, it’s Providence Equity Partners. These two private equity (PE) firms have the two largest non-club tech leveraged buyouts in each of the past two years. Recall that last October – on successive days, no less – Carlyle erased both CommScope and Syniverse Technologies from the public market in a pair of deals that cost the buyout shop $6.5bn. (Understandably, Carlyle has been fairly quiet since then, announcing only a pair of small transactions.)
Now, Providence has its own double-barrel deals that are on top of the standings. Somewhat unusually, both of the firm’s acquisitions came on the first day of a new quarter: On April 1, it announced the planned take-private of SRA International for $1.9bn, and then followed that up Friday with the $1.6bn buyout of Blackboard to start the third quarter.
PE activity since the Great Recession
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Source: The 451 M&A KnowledgeBase