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