 | |
| Company 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]
Activision Publishing, Inc. is an American video game publisher based in Santa Monica, California. It serves as the publishing business for its parent company, Activision Blizzard, and consists of several subsidiary studios. Activision is one of the largest third-party video game publishers in the world and was the top United States publisher in 2016.
Edgar Miles Bronfman Jr. is an American businessman, filmmaker, theater producer, and media executive who is a managing partner at Accretive LLC, a private equity firm focused on creating and investing in technology companies. He previously was 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 was 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. He is chairman of FuboTV.
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Vivendi SE is a French mass-media holding company headquartered in Paris. It owns Gameloft, Groupe Canal+, Havas, Prisma Media, Vivendi Village, and Dailymotion, and is a majority owner of the Lagardère Group. The company has activities in television, film, video game, book publishing, print press, communication, tickets, and video hosting services.
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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.
Centene Corporation is a publicly traded managed care company based in St. Louis, Missouri, which is an intermediary for government-sponsored and privately insured healthcare programs. Centene ranked No. 25 on the 2023 Fortune 500.
Activision Blizzard, Inc. is an American video game holding company based in Santa Monica, California. Activision Blizzard currently includes five business units: Activision Publishing, Blizzard Entertainment, King, Major League Gaming, and Activision Blizzard Studios.
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.
Robert A. Kotick is an American businessman who served as the chief executive officer (CEO) of Activision Blizzard and previously Activision from 1991 to 2023. He became the CEO of Activision after purchasing a company stake the previous year. Kotick engineered a merger between Activision and Vivendi Games during the late 2000s, which led to the creation of Activision Blizzard in 2008 and him being named the company's inaugural CEO. He has also served on several boards, including The Coca-Cola Company from 2012 to 2022, and Yahoo! from 2003 to 2008. Following the acquisition of Activision Blizzard by Microsoft, Kotick retired from the company on December 29, 2023.
Guggenheim Partners, LLC is a global investment and advisory financial services firm that engages in investment banking, asset management, capital markets services, and insurance services.
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Binny Bansal is an Indian billionaire Internet entrepreneur. As of February 2024, his net worth was estimated at US$1.4 billion.
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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.
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