This past December, Apple Leisure Group agreed to a buyout led by KKR and KSL Capital Partners. Currently, Apple Leisure Group is one of Bain Capital’s portfolio companies. The nuances of the agreement have not yet been disclosed and the deal is expected to close in the first quarter of 2017.
WORKFUSION AND THE FUTURE OF THE WORKPLACE
Workfusion, an artificial intelligence startup focused on improving company’s back-end operations, recently raised $35 million of funding. Led by Georgian Partners with support from existing investors Mohr Davidow Ventures, iNovia, Nokia Growth Partners (NGP), Greycroft and RTP Ventures, the series D round brings the grand total raised by Workfusion to $71 million.
GAMING, GADGETS, AND IPO’S
This past year, the tech sector showed strong growth and busy M&A activity. Within tech, the gaming industry reported $30B worth of deals in 2016 alone (Figure 1). This was a new record for gaming mergers and acquisitions, mostly in the mobile sector, and notably the acquisition of Candy Crush developer (King), which closed at $5.9B. In addition to mergers and acquisitions, investments in the gaming industry included research and development in new technologies, mobile, web, and augmented reality / virtual reality (AR/VR) among others.
ONEX CORPORATION FILLS ITS SWEET TOOTH
As of early January, Connecticut based buyout firm L Catterton is looking to close a deal to sell Ferrara Candy to Canadian Onex Corp. Onex has apparently won the auction for the confectionary company, beating out other private equity firms hoping to pay over a 10 figure sum to buyout the maker of Trolli gummies. The deal is supposedly valuing Ferrara at $1.3 Billion according to Reuters, making the deal a rare billion-dollar transaction in the confectionary sector.
SECRET DOUBLE OCTOPUS: VC AND CYBERSECURITY
Cybersecurity is evolving at a pace not seen in virtually any other sector of the economy. Every year, the landscape changes completely as cybersecurity firms try to keep up with malicious hackers. In the last year, we saw an unprecedented number of large-scale hacks that has brought cybersecurity into the mainstream. 167 million users had their LinkedIn information compromised in May. The DNC was attacked, which resulted in the exposure of thousands of emails and other personal information