History
2005 and prior
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]
2006–2013
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]
2014–2020
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]
Key people
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]
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