As we kick off 2014, we wanted to update you on our activity for 2013. In addition to another record year of transactions, we were happy to celebrate Fairmount’s ten year anniversary. Despite a decade that included the weakest economy in almost a century, we are pleased to report that Fairmount continued to grow our business throughout the downturn. It has been our pleasure to build relationships with so many of you over the past decade and complete well over 100 transactions for aggregate consideration of many billions of Dollars, Euros, Pounds and other currencies. We look forward to continuing to serve the middle market companies of our region and beyond in years to come. We gave ourselves a birthday present a few month back – we retired our old monochromatic web site, and introduced our brand new website, featuring bold new graphics - click here to take a look, or click on the links to the right.
Here are the Fairmount Partners highlights for 2013.
Partner Honored as Middle Market Thought Leader of the Year
The Alliance of Merger & Acquisition Advisors ® (AMAA) selected our partner Andy Greenberg as the “Middle Market Thought Leader of the Year.” This honor is bestowed upon individuals who have made a substantial contribution to the merger & acquisition profession through publication of works that promote research and higher standards of excellence. Andy earned this award for his work in creating, founding and growing GF Data, the leading source of merger and acquisition data for private middle market transactions. Please join us in congratulating Andy for a job well done (and for providing critical data that helps us perform better work for our clients.) For more details,
click here.
Charles Robins Selected as Vice Chairman of Ben Franklin Tech Partners
The Board of Directors of Ben Franklin Technology Partners elected our partner Charles Robins as its Vice Chairman. BFTP, an initiative of the Pennsylvania state legislature, is a national, award-winning organization for stimulating entrepreneurial potential through entrepreneurship, technology and innovation. Ben Franklin has invested more than $165 million to grow more than 1,750 regional enterprises, across all areas of technology. It has also launched university/industry partnerships that accelerate scientific discoveries to commercialization. Charles has been a dedicated advocate for technology businesses in the region – serving as a the lead judge for the Greater Philadelphia Alliance for Capital and Technology (PACT) Enterprise Awards, advising dozens of the leading technology businesses in the region, and even starting two successful software businesses. For more details, click here.
Completed Deals
During 2013, we helped our clients to successfully complete a total of 13 transactions. All of our completed and working projects are in our four areas of expertise:
Business & IT Services
Industrial & Consumer
Healthcare
Technology
Assignments included assisting clients in selling their companies; acquiring other businesses; and raising money through investors and lenders to finance growth or achieve liquidity.
We worked on several significant transactions in the Mid-Atlantic region, but because of our international network in our fields of expertise, we completed deals with companies in the United Kingdom, Germany, Ireland, and Israel, as well as the US. Nearly all of our completed 2013 projects came through referrals from former clients, attorneys, accountants, and other friends, and we thank all of you for your support.
Summaries of a number of our 2013 deals can be found below, with additional details on our website . We have also included our first deal closed in 2014: the sale of Big Data analytics platform provider Agilis.
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Headquartered in Maryland, Agilis International, Inc., is a leading provider of predictive data analytics and reconciliation solutions focused primarily in the telecom and media sector. Infogix, Inc. is a leading provider of solutions that enable customers to control, analyze and improve their data integrity and compliance efforts. Infogix is a portfolio company of H.I.G. Capital, a leading global private equity investment firm with more than $13.0 billion of equity capital under management.
Fairmount Partners served as financial advisor to Agilis in their acquisition by Infogix, Inc.
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Headquartered in New Jersey, Hagelin Flavor Technologies is engaged in the development, production and marketing of flavors and unique flavor technologies for the food industry, with an emphasis on the growing sector of beverage flavors. Headquartered in Israel, Frutarom Industries Ltd. is a global company operating in the global flavor and fine ingredients markets.
Fairmount Partners served as financial advisor to Hagelin in their acquisition by Frutarom Industries Ltd. for a cash consideration of $52.4 million.
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CRI Lifetree is a specialized research organization focused on the conduct and design of early stage, patient population studies headquartered in Mount Laurel, NJ. CRI Lifetree was owned by management and private equity firms SV Life Sciences, based in Boston and London, and the Wellesley, MA based Ampersand Ventures. One of the world’s largest CROs, PRA is a leading clinical research organization headquartered in Raleigh, NC with offices around the world. PRA is a portfolio company of investment giant KKR (NYSE:KKR), a leading global investment firm.
Fairmount Partners represented CRI Lifetree in their sale to PRA/KKR.
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Audubon, PA headquartered CFS Clinical is the industry leader in processing clinical trial payments and is a portfolio company of Archbrook Capital Management LLC (Archbrook), a private equity firm based in Philadelphia and New York. Based in London with operations in Princeton, NJ, DrugDev is an interactive network and data sharing platform for over 80,000 clinical trial doctors in 93 countries.
Fairmount Partners served as financial advisors to CFS Clinical, with the support of Anderson LeNeave, a Charlotte based investment bank, in their sale to DrugDev.
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Exton, PA based company WorkplaceDynamics is the leading provider of “on-demand” benchmarked employee surveys and analytical reporting. Bancroft Woods, LLC is a private investment firm based in Wilmington, DE. Through its unique delivery channel, Top Workplaces, WorkplaceDynamics conducts workplace research for its media partners (print and online) located across the country.
Fairmount Partners advised WorkplaceDynamics, LLC in its recapitalization by Bancroft Woods, LLC.
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Based in Atlanta, GA, TRX, Inc. is a leader in travel data and Travel Management Company (“TMC”) mid-office technology solutions that enhance TMC efficiency through automation. Headquartered in Bellevue, WA, with offices around the world, Concur (Nasdaq: CNQR)is the global leader in integrated travel and expense management.
Concur completed its acquisition of TRX, Inc. Fairmount Partners provided financial advisory services to TRX and rendered a fairness opinion in connection with the transaction.
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Telerx, Inc. is a highly regarded provider of management services in the healthcare marketplace headquartered in Pennsylvania with operations in Texas and North Carolina. Telerx, Inc. a subsidiary of Merck & Co., provides services to many of the leading pharmaceutical companies in the world. Sentrx Safety Solutions (based in New Jersey) is a leading pharmacovigilance services organization and was a portfolio company of Edison Ventures.
Telerx, Inc. completed its acquisition of Sentrx Safety Solutions. Fairmount was working with Telerx on a buy-side acquisition assignment and simultaneously a separate team at Fairmount represented Sentrx on an exclusive sale assignment, so for the first time we had two satisfied customers in a single deal.
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Micron Technologies is a leading independent provider of micronization services for solubility enhancement of active pharmaceutical ingredients (“APIs”). With its state of the art facilities in Malvern, PA and Dartford, UK (the birthplace of the Rolling Stones), Micron serves the global needs of many of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world from research and development to commercial scale volumes of APIs.
Fairmount Partners represented Micron Technologies in their sale to Arlington Capital Partners (“Arlington”), a Washington, DC based private equity firm in partnership with the company’s management team.
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Synteract is a Carlsbad, CA based, leading full-service contract research organization (CRO) which is a portfolio company of San Francisco based private equity firm Gryphon Investors.
Fairmount Partners advised Synteract in completing its acquisition of Harrison Clinical Research (HCR), based in Munich, Germany, to form a new multinational CRO – SynteractHCR. The merger makes SynteractHCR a top tier, global CRO and provides additional resources and scale to support large international clinical research programs. Founded in 1987, Harrison was the 3rd largest independent CRO based in Europe. Harrison was an international company, with operations in 15 countries in Western and Eastern Europe, as well as Israel, South America, and the US.
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ICON plc, (NASDAQ: ICLR) is a global provider of outsourced development services to the pharmaceutical, biotechnology and medical device industries. Based in Dublin, Ireland ICON currently has approximately 9,500 employees, operating from 82 locations in 40 countries.
Fairmount Partners represented ICON plc in the acquisition of the Clinical Trial Services Division of Cross Country Healthcare, Inc. (NASDAQ:CCRN), for a cash consideration of approximately $60 million (including a modest earnout). Cross Country Healthcare’s Clinical Trial Services Division includes leading US resourcing providers, ClinForce and Assent Consulting, whose services include contract staffing, permanent placement and functional service provision, and AKOS, a UK safety and pharmacovigilance company.
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We have a large number of active assignments as 2014 kicks off, including projects in the US, Europe and Asia, and we hope to tell you more about these projects in the coming months.
Additions to Our Team
In 2013, we welcomed two new bankers:
Cory Bachstein came on board as an Analyst. Before joining Fairmount, Cory worked at a Pittsburgh, PA based boutique investment bank focusing on buy/sell-side advisory and capital infusion for middle-market companies. Cory earned his B.S. and M.B.A. in Finance, from Duquesne University.
Chris Kim also joined as an Analyst, moving from a Los Angeles, CA based technology-focused boutique investment bank focusing on M&A advisory and growth financings for middle-market and emerging-growth companies. Chris earned his B.S. in Business Administration, with a concentration in Finance from Boston University.
We are always looking for a few more great employees, but are particularly keen to add experienced investment bankers at the Associate, Vice President and Managing Director level – please let us know if you know an excellent candidate.
Publications and Reports
In the beginning of this year we introduced our newest Industry Insight:Fairmount Frameworks. These frameworks are our proprietary classification of companies in a specific sector. Our second framework, Unified Communication Ecosystem, has recently been finalized and will be posted to our website soon.
Along with these Frameworks, we regularly publish six other reports:
IT & Business Services Industry Report
Parting the Clouds - focused on cloud computing
Middle Market Monitor - focused on industrial and consumer companies
Wireless Connections - focused on wireless communications and enterprise mobility
Vital Signs - focused on healthcare IT and software
Pharmaceutical Outsourcing Monitor - (formerly known as the Outsourcing Industry Monitor) focused on pharmaceutical outsourcing
For more information on Fairmount’s industry-specific analyses and reports, or to request inclusion on our distribution list, please click here.
Events
In the upcoming year, Fairmount Partners will be sponsoring or participating in several events, including the PACT’s Enterprise Awards, where we will again serve at Title Sponsor. We will also be sponsoring the Phorum Technology conference in April, with our partner Allen Born serving as the Chairman of the Advisory Board.
We look forward hopefully to seeing you at these events as well as many more throughout the coming year.
Please do not hesitate to contact us if you, or your friends or colleagues, would like to learn more about our services.
Thanks and regards,
The Fairmount Partners Team