 |
Sard Verbinnen & Co. represents Leaf Group, creator of online consumer brands, as it gets acquired by Graham Holdings Co., which was Washington Post Co., in an all-cash $323M deal.
Santa Monica-based Leaf chalked up $212M in fiscal 2020 revenues and an $8.8M loss from brands including Saatchi Art (gallery), Hunker (property tours, home decor), Society6 (wall art), Livestrong & Well+Good (healthy living) and Cuteness (viral animal videos, celebrity pets).
Timothy O’Shaughnessy, CEO of Graham, said his company looks for “businesses that can prosper under our ownership and Leaf Group’s collection of marketplace and media brands make for a growing company that can do just that.”
Graham’s key holdings are seven broadcast TV stations and the Kaplan educational unit.
Sard Verbinnen’s John Christiansen and Nate Johnson represent Leaf Group.
C Street Advisory handles iRobot Corp as the marketer of the Roomba autonomous vacuum cleaner files Chapter 11 after being squeezed by cheaper competitors.
Joele Frank represents Confluent Inc. as the Mountain View, CA-based data streaming platform company agrees to be acquired by IBM in a deal with an enterprise value of $11B.
Tom Johnson, who has headed H/Advisors Abernathy since 2016, will join FGS Global as global head of private capital & financial services, effective Dec. 16.
Brunswick Group and Gagnier Communications are handling Paramount’s $30 cash per-share offer for all of Warner Bros Discovery, topping Netflix $27.50 cash/stock transaction.
ICR Inc. handles communications for Enhanced Ltd, which plans to run Olympic-type competitions with athletes using performance-enhancing drugs, as it goes public in a SPAC deal valued at $1.2B via a merger with A Paradise Acquisition Corp. of Hong Kong.
