 | |
| Type | Private |
|---|---|
| Industry | Banking |
| Founded | 1922 |
| Founder | Charles Robert Allen, Jr. |
| Headquarters | 711 Fifth Avenue New York City |
Area served | United States |
Key people | Herbert Allen III |
| Products | Investment banking |
Number of employees | 170 (2010) |
Allen & Company LLC is an American privately held boutique investment bank based at 711 Fifth Avenue, New York. [1] The firm specializes in real estate, technology, media and entertainment. [2] [3]
Founded in 1922 by Charles Robert Allen, Jr., he was soon joined by his brothers, Herbert A. Allen, Sr. and Harold Allen. The firm is generally regarded as a boutique advisory firm with a specific specialization in real estate and the media and entertainment sectors. [4]
Allen & Company, which since 2002 has been run by Herbert Allen III, [5] grandnephew of the founder, generally shies away from publicity and does not maintain a website or issue press releases, with the exception of the extensive media procured for its annual conference evidenced by its allowance of access to the conference by financial media properties such as CNBC, The Wall Street Journal and others to cover its event.
In 1973, Allen & Company bought a stake in Columbia Pictures. When the business was sold in 1982 to Coca-Cola, it netted a significant profit. Since then, Herbert Allen, Jr. has had a place on Coca-Cola's board of directors.
Since its founding in 1982, the Allen & Company Sun Valley Conference has regularly drawn high-profile attendees such as Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Rupert Murdoch, Barry Diller, Michael Eisner, Oprah Winfrey, Robert Johnson, Andy Grove, Richard Parsons, and Donald Keough.
Allen & Co. was one of ten underwriters for the Google initial public offering in 2004. [6] In 2007, Allen was sole advisor to Activision in its $18 billion merger with Vivendi Games. [7] In 2011, the New York Mets hired Allen & Co. to sell a minority stake of the team. That deal later fell apart. [8] [9] In November 2013, Allen & Co. was one of seven underwriters on the initial public offering of Twitter. [10] Allen & Co. was the adviser of Facebook in its $19 billion acquisition of WhatsApp in February 2014. [11]
In 2015, Allen & Co. was the advisor to Time Warner Cable in its $80 billion 2015 merger with Charter Communications, [12] AOL in its acquisition by Verizon, [13] Centene Corporation in its $6.8 billion acquisition of Health Net, [14] and eBay in its separation from PayPal. [15]
In 2016, Allen & Co was the lead advisor to Time Warner in its $108 billion acquisition by AT&T, [16] LinkedIn for its merger talks with Microsoft, [17] Walmart in its $3.3 billion purchase of Jet.com, [18] and Verizon in its $4.8 billion acquisition of Yahoo!. [19] In 2017, Allen & Co. was the advisor to Chewy.com in PetSmart's $3.35 billion purchase of the online retailer. [20]
Edgar Miles Bronfman Jr. is an American businessman who currently serves as a Managing Partner at Accretive LLC, a private equity firm focused on creating and investing in technology companies. He previously served as CEO of Warner Music Group from 2004 to 2011 and as Chairman of Warner Music Group from 2011 to 2012. In May 2011, the sale of WMG was announced; Bronfman would continue as CEO in the transaction. In August 2011, he became Chairman of the company as Stephen Cooper became CEO. Bronfman previously served as CEO of Seagram and vice-chairman of Vivendi Universal. Bronfman Jr. expanded and later divested ownership of the Seagram Company, and also worked as a Broadway and film producer, and songwriter under the pseudonyms Junior Miles and Sam Roman.
NBCUniversal Media, LLC is an American multinational mass media and entertainment conglomerate corporation owned by Comcast and headquartered at 30 Rockefeller Plaza in Midtown Manhattan in New York City.
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Vivendi SE is a French mass media holding company headquartered in Paris. Widely known as the owner of Gameloft, Groupe Canal+, Havas, Editis, Prisma Media, Vivendi Village and Dailymotion, the company has activities in television, film, video game, book publishing, print press, communication, tickets and video hosting services.
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Evercore Inc., formerly known as Evercore Partners, is a global independent investment banking advisory firm founded in 1995 by Roger Altman, David Offensend, and Austin Beutner. The firm has advised on over $4.7 trillion of merger, acquisition, and restructuring transactions since its founding. Evercore is widely considered one of the most prestigious and elite investment banking advisory firms.
Vivendi Games was an American video game publisher and holding company based in Los Angeles. It was founded in 1996 as CUC Software, the publishing subsidiary of CUC International, after the latter acquired video game companies Davidson & Associates and Sierra On-Line. Between 1997 and 2001, the company switched parents and names multiple times before ending up organized under Vivendi Universal. On July 10, 2008, Vivendi Games merged with Activision to create Activision Blizzard.
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Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP is an American international law firm with approximately 1,100 attorneys, headquartered in New York City. With a gross annual revenue in excess of $1.8 billion, it is among the world's largest law firms according to The American Lawyer's AmLaw 100 survey. It is considered to be one of the most prestigious law firms in the world.
Centene Corporation is a publicly traded managed care company based in St. Louis, Missouri. It serves as an intermediary for government-sponsored and privately insured health care programs. Centene ranked No. 26 on the 2021 Fortune 500.
Activision Blizzard, Inc. is an American video game holding company based in Santa Monica, California. It was founded in July 2008 through the merger of Activision, Inc. and Vivendi Games. It is traded on the Nasdaq stock exchange under the ticker symbol ATVI, and since 2015 has been a member of the S&P 500 Index. Activision Blizzard currently includes five business units: Activision Publishing, Blizzard Entertainment, King, Major League Gaming, and Activision Blizzard Studios.
Tencent Holdings Ltd. is a Chinese multinational technology and entertainment conglomerate and holding company headquartered in Shenzhen. It is one of the highest grossing multimedia companies in the world based on revenue. It is also the world’s largest company in the video game industry based on its investments, with Tencent Games being the subdivision of Tencent Interactive Entertainment Group (IEG) focused on publishing of games.
BC Partners is a British international investment firm with over $40 billion of assets under management across private equity, credit and real estate in Europe and North America. Its global headquarters are in London. The firm invests across all industries. BC Partners was founded in 1986 and has offices in New York, Paris and Hamburg. Since inception, BC Partners has completed 113 private equity investments in companies with a total enterprise value of €145 billion.
Guggenheim Partners is a global investment and advisory financial services firm that engages in investment banking, asset management, capital markets services, and insurance services.
Flipkart Private Limited is an Indian e-commerce company, headquartered in Bengaluru, and incorporated in Singapore as a private limited company. The company initially focused on online book sales before expanding into other product categories such as consumer electronics, fashion, home essentials, groceries, and lifestyle products.
Centerview Partners is an American independent investment banking firm. Centerview operates primarily as an investment banking advisory firm. Centerview has 60 partners and 400 professionals with expertise across a wide range of industries, geographies, transaction structures and sizes.
Chewy, Inc. is an American online retailer of pet food and other pet-related products based in Plantation, Florida. In 2017, Chewy was acquired by PetSmart for $3.35 billion, which was the largest acquisition of an e-commerce business at the time.
go90 was an American Internet television service and mobile app owned and operated by Verizon Communications. The service was positioned as a mobile-oriented "social entertainment platform" targeted primarily towards millennials, featuring a mixture of new and acquired content from various providers. The service was available exclusively within the United States.
Yahoo! Inc. is an American multinational technology company that focuses on media and online business. It is the second and current incarnation of the company, after Verizon Communications acquired the core assets of its predecessor and merged them with AOL in 2017. The resulting subsidiary entity was briefly called Oath Inc. In December 2018, Verizon announced it would write down the combined value of its purchases of AOL and Yahoo! by $4.6 billion, roughly half; the company would be renamed Verizon Media the following month in January 2019.
On January 18, 2022, Microsoft announced its intent to acquire Activision Blizzard for $68.7 billion in cash. Under the terms of the agreement, which were expected to close by Spring 2023 pending regulatory and shareholder approval, Microsoft would own Activision, Blizzard Entertainment, and King under the Xbox Game Studios division.
