GE Antares was the administrative agent on a $66 million senior secured credit facility to support the acquisition of Cascade Drilling Environmental Services, a portfolio company of Emigrant Capital since 2009, by Snow Phipps Group.
Cascade Drilling is a west coast provider of environmental testing, soil remediation, and geotechnical drilling. The company’s capabilities include auger, direct push, sonic and rotary drilling. Cascade Drilling was founded in 1992 as a regional drilling company operating across three states in the Northwestern US. Today, the company has 30 offices nationwide and is headquartered north of Seattle in Woodinville, WA (www.cascadedrilling.com).
This is not the first time GE Antares has financed an acquisition by Snow Phipps. In November 2014, they served as administrative agent on a $104 million senior secured credit facility to finance Snow Phipps’ buy of Teasdale Quality Foods.
“We have a great relationship with the team at GE Antares. Working with them means certainty of execution combined with capital markets and industry expertise,” said Sean Epps, partner at Snow Phipps. “We look forward to continuing our financing relationship with GE Antares.”
GE Antares is a unit of GE Capital and has offices in Atlanta, Chicago, Los Angeles, Toronto, New York, and San Francisco. Specializing in the middle market, GE Antares is a “one-stop” source for GE’s lending and other services to middle market private equity sponsors (www.geantares.com).
“Cascade Drilling is a market leader with advanced solutions such as sonic drilling, and a strong management team,” said Doug Cannaliato, managing director of GE Antares. “We are excited about supporting this acquisition and look forward to supporting management and Snow Phipps as they grow the company.”
Snow Phipps makes control investments in companies primarily located in North America with enterprise values ranging from $100 million to $500 million that require equity investments ranging from $40 million to $100 million. The firm has $1.5 billion of assets under management and was co-founded by Ian Snow and Ogden Phipps in April 2005. Snow Phipps is headquartered in New York (www.snowphipps.com).
© 2015 PEPD • Private Equity’s Leading News Magazine • 2-26-15
