Warburg and Carlyle snap up rating agency
ALTERNATIVE asset manager the Carlyle Group and US private equity firm Warburg Pincus yesterday agreed to acquire the world’s fourth largest credit rating agency, DBRS.
The buyout pair completed a deal for the Toronto-based company in partnership with a consortium of Canadian-based individual investors, including DBRS founder, Walter Schroeder, and other members of the company’s management team.
DBRS currently rates more than 1,000 companies and special-purpose vehicles from North and South America, Europe and Australasia that issue commercial paper, term debt and preferred shares in the global capital markets.
Terms of the deal – which is expected to be completed in the first quarter of next year – were not disclosed.
Perella Weinberg Partners served as DBRS’s financial adviser and Torys its legal counsel. CIBC World Markets was the financial adviser and Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz and Strikeman Elliot were the legal counsels to Carlyle and Warburg.
Olivier Sarkozy, Carlyle’s managing director and head of its financial services team, said: “In partnership with Dan Curry and his management team, we will continue the build out of the DBRS platform on a global basis. The world needs more global ratings franchises that issuers and investors alike can count on to provide timely and insightful ratings on a consistent and impartial basis. As the world’s fourth largest agency we believe DBRS is ideally suited to fill that void.”
Headquartered in New York, with offices in spanning the length and breadth of the globe, Warburg sits on a vast $37bn (£23.75bn) treasure trove of assets. Carlyle, on the other hand, looks after $203bn across 129 funds and 141 funds vehicles, making it one of the world’s largest asset managers.