Apax Partners has agreed to acquire Dominion Marine Media from Dominion Enterprises, a subsidiary of Landmark Media Enterprises. The transaction is expected to close in the third quarter of 2016.
Dominion Marine Media (DMM) operates the world’s largest and most popular recreational marine digital marketplaces – BoatTrader, boats.com, YachtWorld, and CosasDeBarcos – with over 62 million unique visitors annually and more than 300,000 boat and yacht listings. DMM also provides marketing software which is used by boat dealers and brokers to increase inventory turnover. DMM was founded in 1999 and is led by its president, Ian Atkins. The company has offices in Norfolk, VA; Vancouver, BC; Hampshire, UK; Barcelona, Spain; and Padova, Italy (www.dominionmarinemedia.com).
“Our brands have a long tradition of excellence in providing leading digital business solutions for the recreational boating industry,” said Mr. Atkins. “We are confident that the expertise and resources provided by the Apax team will not only further our mission of driving boat sales globally, but will be essential to our next phase of growth.”
Apax has prior experience investing in the digital classifieds and lead generation sector having acquired or invested in TRADER Corporation (automotive advertising); AutoTrader (online automotive classifieds); Bankrate (online aggregator of financial rate information); Dealer.com (online marketing platforms for auto dealers); Idealista (online real estate classifieds); and Soufun (online real estate classifieds).
“The recreational marine industry is poised for digital transformation and DMM is the only integrated digital media, technology and data platform positioned to capture this opportunity globally,” said Marcelo Gigliani, a partner at Apax Partners. “We are excited to be backing Ian and his team and are eager to leverage our experience investing in and operating leading digital classifieds businesses to accelerate growth at DMM.”
Apax invests in the technology and telecom; services; healthcare; and consumer sectors. The firm has eight offices located in London, New York, São Paulo, Munich, Tel Aviv, Mumbai, Hong Kong and Shanghai (www.apax.com).
New York-based investment bank Evercore (www.evercore.com) advised Dominion Enterprises.
© 2016 Private Equity Professional • 7-27-16
