Lancer Group Places Former Solera (NYSE:SLH) Finance Executive at JMI-backed ResourceNation as CFO (External Link)September 26, 2011 |
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Hellman & Friedman acquires Openlink Financial Solutions from The Carlyle Group (External Link)September 12, 2011 |
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Lancer Group Places Former IAC (NASDAQ:IACI) SVP HR at Apax Partners-backed Epicor as SVP Human Resources (External Link)August 31, 2011 |
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Vitol sees 25% rise in trading volumes amid strong energy demand (External Link)May 14, 2011Vitol, the world’s largest oil trader, said trading volumes rose 25 per cent last year compared with 2009, helping it to deliver a “solid performance”. The privately-held company does not disclose profitability but said in a statement on Monday that revenues rose to $195bn, up more than one-third from $143bn in the previous year. Revenues are, however, a poor measure of traders’ performance as they rise or fall with commodities prices and volumes and have little influence on profitability. Commodities traders’ margins are razor-thin, with some showing profitability as low as 0.5 per cent of overall revenue in a bad year and as high as 3 per cent in boom periods. Oil trading houses suffered a relatively lacklustre 2010 due to low market volatility in oil and gas. Ian Taylor, Vitol chief executive, said that trading conditions would remain “competitive” in 2011. But he added that global demand for energy would grow strongly, which often helps trading houses’ profitability. “Despite some lingering uncertainty, the global economic outlook is strong and can be expected to underpin strong growth in energy demand, particularly in the fast growing economies of Asia, the Middle East and South America,” Mr Taylor said. Vitol is expanding beyond its core business of trading. For example, it said on Monday that it had joined with private equity firm Helios Investment to buy some of Royal Dutch Shell’s downstream business in Africa for about $1bn. Mr Taylor suggested Vitol had the appetite for further deals in the short term, saying that “as the traditional oil majors look to reshape their portfolios, with a bias to the upstream, this will continue to offer both trading potential and investment opportunities in selected high quality assets.” Last May Vitol sold a 50 per cent stake in its petroleum terminals and storage business to a subsidiary of Petronas, Malaysia’s national oil company, for $735m in cash. The trading house published its first ever financial comments last year, disclosing trading volumes and revenues – a move that was seen as a small step towards greater transparency among trading companies, which have traditionally shunned publicity. Glencore, the world’s largest trader of minerals, metals, oil and food, has moved to publish biannual financial results and other trading houses are also publishing some financial details. Vitol is the world’s largest oil trader by volume, ahead of Glencore, Trafigura, Gunvor and Mercuria. It trades nearly 5m barrels a day, enough to cover the daily import needs of France, Italy and Spain combined. |
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Lancer Group places former American Express (NYSE:AXP) VP Corporate Development at fmr. Carlyle-backed Openlink Financial Solutions (External Link)May 11, 2011 |
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The Active Network sets IPO price range (External Link)San Diego company hopes to sell shares at $16 to $18 eachMay 10, 2011The Active Network, which provides online registration services for everything from recreational races to campground reservations, has set the price range for its pending initial public stock offering. The San Diego company expects shares to open in the range of $16 to $18 each. Under that scenario, The Active Network’s stock sale could generate as much as $227 million, assuming the top share price. The company, founded in 1998, won’t get that much in its coffers, however. It is selling about 8.2 million shares. After fees, it stands to raise about $127 million at a middle price point of $17 a share. Existing investors are offering an additional 2.8 million shares for sale. The remainder of the potential payout comes from over allotments that underwriters can exercise depending on demand. The Active Network has not set a date for the stock sale. But in establishing a price range for its shares, it appears to be getting close to testing the public markets. IPOs have been difficult for technology companies outside the social media space in recent years. Industry experts say that investors appetites may be returning, driven by higher prices paid in recent software mergers and acquisitions. There have been 43 IPOs so far this year, up 39 percent from the same period a year ago, says Renaissance Capital, an industry research firm. The Active Network has been growing its revenue and has a customer base of 47,000 organizations. It has processed 70 million transactions in 2010 for everything from golf tee times to marathons, sports leagues to hunting licenses. But despite increased revenue, the company has never been profitable under generally accepted accounting principals. In 2010, the company had sales of $279.6 million, up 15 percent from the prior year, and a net loss of $27 million. Its loss in 2009 was $38 million. In the first quarter, sales again increased 15 percent to $72.7 million over the same period a year ago. The company lost $10.9 million, compared with a loss of $11.5 million last year. The Active Network has grown through acquisitions, buying 25 companies over the past five years. The pace of acquisitions has slowed down lately however. The company is in a quiet period and cannot comment. It plans to use the proceeds to pay off debt, fund potential acquisitions and for general corporate purposes. The Active Network’s proposed ticker symbol is ACTV. Its shares would trade on the New York Stock Exchange. Underwriters include Bank of America/Merrill Lynch, Citi, Allen & Co., Stifel Nicolaus, RBC Capital Markets, ThinkEquity and W R Hambrecht & Co. |
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Emptoris Buys Xcitec (External Link)Emptoris, which is backed by Marlin Equity Partners, has bought Xcitec, a Munich, Germany-based provider of supply management services. Financial terms were not announced.May 04, 2011Emptoris, Inc., a leading provider of strategic supply, category spend and enterprise contract management solutions, announced today that it has acquired Xcitec, a leading provider of supplier management solutions headquartered in Munich, Germany. The combination of Emptoris and Xcitec creates the market’s most comprehensive end-to-end solution for Supplier Lifecycle Management, a single solution that manages all the business processes associated with supplier management; including supplier on-boarding, qualification, risk assessment, performance management and rationalization. With Emptoris’ Supplier Lifecycle Management solution, companies can now readily address the critical challenges and complexities related to strategic supplier management from managing a global supply base to mitigating the impacts of volatility and risk. “The Emptoris Supplier Lifecycle Management solution will allow organizations to strategically manage suppliers by answering these critical questions: Who should I do business with? What do I need to know about the services and products they provide? And How are they performing and are they risky to my business?” said Patrick D. Quirk, president and chief executive officer of Emptoris, Inc. “The joining of Emptoris and Xcitec will dramatically shift the way companies gain access to the intelligence they need to make critical business decisions – and drive value to the organization.” Emptoris and Xcitec customers will now have access to a single strategic solution that consolidates supplier information and provides central visibility and the ability to feed this intelligence into the analysis and decision cycle. In addition, Xcitec customers will gain access to Emptoris’ market-leading sourcing, category spend and contract management solutions – and the Emptoris global infrastructure which includes customer support in more than 16 languages. “Making the correct choices about suppliers and their role in your organization has a profound impact on the success of an enterprise. Uninformed decisions can lead to unexpected risks, costs, and delivery issues, all of which impact the bottom-line. Enterprises must have a concise method of gathering and processing their supplier information in order to maximize the value and effectiveness of the supply base. Without such a system, the enterprise is operating at a major disadvantage,” said Eugene Iacob, Director of Global Supplier Management at Hatch, one of the world’s leading engineering, procurement and construction management firms. Best in class companies utilize technology to aggregate supplier information and provide greater supplier visibility, and leverage this intelligence to inform supply\sourcing decisions and strategies. “With a large and increasingly global supply base, and supplier data scattered across disparate and diverse systems, companies are often overwhelmed with the management of supplier information and applying this information to actionable supplier strategies. The result is that higher-value propositions, such as supplier performance management and development, become much more difficult and time consuming and as a result are often incomplete,” said Martin Berr-Sorokin, chief executive officer, Xcitec. “By providing a single, accurate and robust source for supplier data and intelligence, Emptoris and Xcitec enable companies to deliver greater supplier performance and value across the organization.” Furthering the Supplier Vision, Continuing Strategic Growth With the acquisition of Xcitec and the January 2011 acquisition of Rivermine, Inc., Emptoris now has an expanded suite of six strategic solutions, more than 750 employees globally and more than 330 Global 1000 customers. Xcitec’s customers are largely international companies including Siemens, BASF, Deutsche Post DHL, EADS, ThyssenKrupp and Vodafone, which aligns well with Emptoris’ Global 1000 customer base. Emptoris’ majority shareholder and capital partner, Marlin Equity Partners, which has over $1 billion of capital under management, funded the Xcitec acquisition as part of its plan to accelerate Emptoris’ strategic growth. According to Gartner, the supply base management market will grow at a 32% CAGR through 2013. Xcitec’s employees have joined the Emptoris team effective April 29th, 2011. Co-founder Martin Berr-Sorokin will be SVP and GM of Supplier Management at Emptoris and co-founder Uwe Krieger will be VP of Development and Operations for Supplier Management. Further terms of the deal were not disclosed. About Emptoris About Xcitec |
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Apax Partners to acquire Epicor and Activant Solutions for $2B (External Link)Apax says it intends to combine Activant and Epicor to create “one of the largest global providers of enterprise applications focused on the manufacturing, distribution, services and retail sectors”April 04, 2011Business software maker Epicor this morning announced that it has agreed to be acquired by private equity firm Apax Partners. The transaction is valued at approximately $976 million. In a separate announcement, Apax said it will also acquire Activant Solutions, a provider of business management software solutions that was controlled by investment funds affiliated with Hellman & Friedman, Thoma Bravo and JMI Equity. The combined transaction is valued at approximately $2 billion. Under the terms of the deal with Epicor, Apax will commence a tender offer to acquire all of the company’s outstanding common stock for $12.50 per share in cash, followed by a merger to acquire all remaining outstanding Epicor shares at the same price paid in the tender offer. Following completion of the merger, the combined company will be Epicor Software Corporation and will no longer be a publicly traded company. The offer price represents a premium of 11.2% over Epicor’s closing stock price on Friday and a 34.4% premium over the average closing price for the previous 52-week period. Apax is providing 100% of the equity financing for the acquisition of Epicor. Elliott Associates, which owns approximately 13.5% of Epicor’s outstanding shares, has already indicated that it supports the acquisition. Under the terms of the merger agreement, Apax will commence the tender offer for Epicor no later than April 8, 2011. The company’s board has approved the transaction, which is subject to closing conditions including minimum levels of participation in the tender offer and regulatory approvals, and the satisfaction of the closing conditions for Apax’s acquisition of Activant. Apax says it intends to combine Activant and Epicor to create “one of the largest global providers of enterprise applications focused on the manufacturing, distribution, services and retail sectors” with over 30,000 customers and $825 million in annual revenues. The acquisitions are expected to close by the end of the second calendar quarter of this year. |
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The Active Network Takes Action Toward Raising $150M in IPO (External Link)February 21, 2011San Diego-based The Active Network, which provides registration services for athletic endurance events, is planning to sell a ton of public stock in the near future. The home-grown Web-based company said Feb. 14 in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission that it hopes to raise $150 million in its offering, and use part of the money to repay debt, which amounts to $43 million. In addition, the company said some of the proceeds would go toward “funding potential acquisitions and for general corporate purposes, including financing our growth, developing additional application services functionality and features, acquiring new customers and funding capital expenditures.” Because the company is in a quiet period as required by regulators, spokesman Jake Gonzales said he couldn’t talk about the company or the stock offering. “I can’t comment right now,” he said. Nik Varaiya, a professor of finance at San Diego State University’s business school and an expert in initial public offerings, said it appears that Active Network is taking advantage of the growing appetite for new companies on Wall Street among investors, both institutional and retail. “They would like to take advantage of the current market for new shares while the window of opportunity is still open,” he said. Encouraging Signs of Growth He added the fact that the company has been steadily growing sales, though it has never made a profit, is encouraging. “That says a lot about their ability to grow significant revenues over time,” he said. And he noted that the company has been narrowing losses, too. But, he also said that current investors are probably putting some pressure on to go public so they can cash out of their position. “The challenge will be to continue that sales growth” and become profitable, he said. The Active Network works with about 47,000 businesses and organizations, and registers 70 million visitors to its Web sites each year, according to the company. In its SEC documents, the company reported sales of $218 million for the first three quarters of its fiscal year, an 18 percent increase from the year ago period. It reported a net loss of $38 million for 2010, down from $49 million the year prior. The Active Network ranked No. 8 on the San Diego Business Journal’s list of the Largest Private Companies with $245 million in revenue for 2009. The privately held business is 13 years old, and has a high profile with the athletes using its site to sign up for such events as triathlons and marathons, as well as other outdoor activities. Words of Caution However, it has $328 million in accumulated deficits, according to the SEC filing. It said the business area is still evolving, and poses some risks to investors: “We … have a limited operating history with our current business upon which to predict our future operating results,” the filing said. “The business is relatively new and subject to rapid change.” The company has raised more than $275 million in a number of rounds from venture capital investors, including $22 million from ESPN, the sports media giant. The company owns 22 percent of The Active Network, according to the SEC filing. VC firms with investments include Menlo Park-based Canaan Partners, New York City-based IAC (which took stock in exchange for ReserveAmerica campground reservation site) and Boston-based ABS Ventures. Entering Faith Market Meanwhile, it appears that Active Network is getting a little religion. The company said Feb. 8 that it has acquired Fellowship Technologies, which provides church management software to its customers. The software company counts 1,700 churches as clients, including 36 percent of North America’s largest churches, according to an Active Network news release. A company news release said the market for such software is huge. There are 300,000 churches in North America, not to mention the tens of thousands of houses of prayer overseas. Tom York is a contributing editor for the San Diego Business Journal. |
Lancer Group Places former Advantage Sales & Marketing Solutions CFO at Court Square Capital Partners-backed Mosaic Sales Solutions (External Link)February 14, 2011Bob brings 30 years of diversified financial experience to his role as Chief Financial Officer, and his vast knowledge ensures everything we do, everyday, is improving our client’s return on investment. He joined Mosaic in February 2011 after serving as a partner in Consolidation Partners LLC ,working with clients to replicate the successful Partnership Roll-up strategy used at Advantage Sales & Marketing (ASM), where he was CFO from 1996 until 2007. During his 11 year tenure at ASM, Bob worked alongside the CEO and Founder to help lead a consolidation in the food brokerage industry, facilitating the roll up of almost 40 companies over ten years, resulting in a $1.0 billion company when he left. In addition, Bob was a Partner in Irvine Associates Corporate Finance Group. Bob holds a MBA from the University of Chicago and a BA from California State University at Fullerton. |
I have worked with dozens of premiere, name brand retained executive search firms throughout my career and been disappointed with many. The Lancer Group is truly a standout in this crowded space. They bring three important capabilities to their work. A commitment to truly understanding the job specification and the needs of their clients. A strong and broad research capability. A real commitment to satisfying clients and not stuffing a candidate to complete a search.