OMERS Private Equity has agreed to sell its portfolio company Marketwired LP to New York-based Nasdaq. The transaction is expected to close before the end of March.
Marketwired, acquired by OMERS Private Equity (OPE) in 2006, is a news wire service used by investor relations and public relations professionals for news distribution and media management. The company is led by CEO Adnan Ahmed. Marketwired was founded as Internet Wire in October 1994 and is today headquartered in Toronto (www.marketwired.com).
In July 2010, Marketwired – under OPE ownership – acquired Sysomos, a social monitoring and analytics service which provides its customers the ability to track their social media activity across Facebook, Twitter, and other social media sites. Marketwired and Sysomos separated in 2015 and Sysomos will remain under OPE’s ownership. Sysomos is headquartered in Toronto (www.sysomos.com).
“Marketwired has been part of OPE since 2006 and has been a strong contributor to our returns,” said Michael Graham, a senior managing director at OPE. “The sale to Nasdaq is a logical step in the company’s evolution.” Marketwired has had a marketing partnership – its services are recommended to listed companies – with NASDAQ since April 2003.
The sale of Marketwired by OPE follows the December 2015 purchase of PR Newswire by Cision, a portfolio company of GTCR. Cision, acquired by GTCR in February 2014, is a subscription and cloud-based provider of public relations and marketing software that is used by public relations and corporate communications professionals to manage public relations campaigns, including content distribution, media monitoring and media analysis. Cision is headquartered in Chicago with additional offices in Canada, UK, France, Germany, Portugal, Sweden, Finland and China (www.cision.com).
OMERS Private Equity manages the private equity activities of OMERS, one of Canada’s largest pension funds. The group’s investment strategy includes the active ownership of businesses in North America and Europe. Sectors of interest include manufacturing, financial and business services, industrial and consumer products, transportation, and technology. Investment sizes range from $100 million to $500 million. The firm is located in Toronto with offices in New York and London and has $6 billion of investments under management (www.omerspe.com).
Morrison & Foerster (www.mofo.com) is providing legal counsel to both Marketwired and OMERS Private Equity. The transaction team at Morrison & Foerster is led by New York-based, M&A partner and Co-Chair of Global Private Equity, Jonathan Melmed. Also on the transaction team are New York Partners Enrico Granata (M&A), Michelle Jewett (Tax), John Delaney (IP transactional) and Domnick Bozzetti (Compensation & Benefits), Palo Alto partner Christine Lyon (Employment) Washington, DC partner Jonathan Gowdy (Antitrust), of counsel Aki Bayz (Antitrust), New York M&A associate Lisa Bozman and visiting international attorney Rafael Zabaglia and New York associate Ken Nicholds (IP transactional).
BMO Capital Markets (www.bmo.com) served as financial advisor to Marketwired and OMERS Private Equity.
© 2016 Private Equity Professional • 2-12-16
