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Since it was founded by David Bonderman and Jim Coulter in 1992, TPG Capital has grown to become a major force in the buyout industry, raising some of biggest private equity funds ever (including one that nearly reached $20 billion) and carrying out some of the highest-profile takeovers in history.

But unlike rivals such as Blackstone, KKR and Apollo Global Management, TPG has never gone public, instead remaining a partnership and eschewing the chance to find new shareholders on the stock market.

And that’s the way Coulter and Jon Winkelried, who succeeded Bonderman as co-CEO in 2015, plan to keep it. After considering its alternatives, the buyout shop will not go public in the immediate future and will instead continue to operate as a private partnership, according to Bloomberg. Rather than selling shares directly to the public, the firm will reportedly examine other financing options, including the potential sale of a stake in itself to private investors.

Read Full Article – www.picthbook.com

Security Companies Needed For Acquisition

We are currently working on a number of ‘live’ briefs for a number of Clients who operate within the Security Sector.
On previous acquisitions we have worked upon in this Sector, we have negotiated deal values between £2 Million and £42 Million.
Timescales from initial contact to completing in full on deals has been as quick as 4 weeks, but an average timeframe is 4 -6 months.
Our Clients are currently looking for companies that provide any or all of the following services:

We operate with all companies in this sector within the strictest guidelines. Ensuring confidentiality between all parties is our highest priority. All parties are protected by Non-Disclosure Agreements and a full project brief is signed off by all parties who enter into discussions.

If you are looking to exit your Company, either now or in the future, please do make contact. We are ideally placed to match you with one of our Clients.
Please email Mark Roberts, Partner at mark@achieve-corporation.com for an immediate response.

It’s been rough for crypto enthusiasts lately. The heady days of December are quickly fading from memory. When bitcoin approached the $20,000 threshold and a brave new future of digital, decentralized currency not backed by banks or states seemed all but assured.

Months of persistent price weakness, exchange hacks and fears that many bitcoin miners are operating at a loss have brought back the fear, uncertainty and doubt. (Or “FUD,” in crypto-speak.) Bitcoin tested a low of $6,252 this week—returning to levels not seen since November.

And now, a new paper by finance professor John Griffin and graduate student Amin Shams of the University of Texas at Austin suggests that bitcoin’s Icarus-like rise could’ve been built on a lie. That Tether, a “stable coin” that claims to be redeemable (not just tradeable, via an exchange) into US dollars, was a source of fraudulent buying demand that drove about half of the rise in bitcoin in late 2017.

A charge that plays into the critics’ concerns about the risks of an unregulated, opaque industry that got its start facilitating dark-web transactions in drugs on Silk Road.

Using algorithms to analyze blockchain data, the researchers found that bitcoin purchases with Tether “are timed following market downturns and result in sizable increases in Bitcoin prices.” Less than 1% of hours with heavy Tether-into-bitcoin transactions are associated with periods when bitcoin prices were rising. Moreover, the purchases were clustered below round prices (e.g., $10,000) and suggest “incomplete Tether backing.”

Translation: It looks like the people behind Tether were using freshly created Tethers to bolster the price of bitcoin. Often, with Tethers that weren’t backed, one-for-one, by US dollars held in reserve.

Untangling the story is a trip down a binary rabbit hole.

Read the Full Article and Article Credits – www.pitchbook.com

Just when you thought the situation couldn’t get any more bizarre for Tesla and CEO Elon Musk, it did. Add allegations of sabotage to the company’s ongoing workforce woes and its struggle to raise Model 3 production and boost profitability to avoid what looks like an unavoidable capital raise later this year to fund a voracious spending pace.

Along with another inexplicable battery fire. The creation of the GA4, or General Assembly 4 line, in a giant tent. And Musk’s obsession with the bears that have bet against Tesla’s share price performance to the tune of roughly $12 billion at last count.

Never mind all the other drama seen in recent months. The bizarre and confrontational post-earnings call. The Twitter tirade against Warren Buffett and the threat to get into the candy business. The ongoing concerns about the safety and efficacy of Tesla’s semi-autonomous Autopilot system and its tendency to crash into parked firetrucks and police vehicles.

The latest is that the automaker has sued Martin Tripp, a former process technician at its Gigafactory in Nevada, for hacking its “confidential and trade secret information.” The suit goes on to accuse Tripp of “transferring several gigabytes of Tesla data to outside entities” along with capturing a number of confidential photos and a video of the secretive manufacturer’s production line.

Honestly, it all sounds like something out of a made-for-TV drama.

Qualcomm has abandoned its $44 billion bid for Dutch rival NXP Semiconductors after failing to secure approval from Chinese regulators, ending an almost two-year battle to wrap up one of the largest deals in the chip industry ever.

Qualcomm needed China’s approval because the country reportedly accounted for nearly two-thirds of its revenue last year.

The company will now embark on a $30 billion share buyback programme, while also having to contend with paying a $2 billion termination fee to the Eindhoven-based company. NXP—which announced revenues of $2.29 billion in 2Q, an increase of 4% year-on-year at the time of the cancellation—has also authorised a $5 billion share repurchase initiative of its own.

The reluctance to greenlight the deal—after Qualcomm gained approvals in eight of nine countries needed—brings to the fore the ongoing trade spat between the US and China, which kicked off at the beginning of the month after Washington introduced tariffs on $34 billion-worth of Chinese goods.

Full Article and Article Credits – www.pitchbook.com

Amid the massive drop in its stock price on Thursday, the largest single day loss for a company in stock market history, Facebook announced a deal that it struck for Redkix. The move on the Israeli email and messaging platform, reported to be worth around $100 million, represents a bid to boost Facebook’s Workplace offering as competitors increase market share in the enterprise communications and workplace collaboration sector.

Later that day, rival chat platform Slack announced its agreement to acquire Atlassian‘s Hipchat and Stride messaging products in a partnership between the two collaboration companies.

Can’t beat ’em? Have you tried joining ’em?

The deals dial up the heat on the war brewing for how we chat, collaborate and circulate documents alongside clever little memes and gifs. Consider for a moment the stakes involved.

By some estimates, enterprise communications represents a roughly $70 billion industry. As people’s social media use evolves from a grab bag of cat videos, conspiracy theories and links to news stories, many of us have moved into much smaller, more private groups predicated on shared work and interests.

Facebook has recognized that with the launch of various community-building efforts on its platform meant to stitch people together out in the wider world. But workplace groups, built around teams collaborating on projects, represent an organic community of sorts already in place. And Facebook and Slack have joined a pitched battle for larger slices of our attention on that front.

They’re not alone in recognizing this fact about contemporary workflow and communications habits. Indeed, in a deal mooted and then eclipsed the following day by its game-changing acquisition of Whole foods, Amazon emerged for a hot second as a potential suitor for Slack last June.

The battle brewing between Facebook and Slack should also be seen in the context of two important deals struck in recent years by Microsoft in the collaboration and communications space. It purchased LinkedIn for $26.2 billion in 2016, handing the tech giant control of the world’s largest network of working professionals. And Microsoft’s $7.5 billion deal for GitHub earlier this summer signaled that Microsoft could also deploy its valuable stock to elbow its way into an influential community of millions of coders.

Full Article and Article Credits – https://pitchbook.com/news/articles/the-battle-over-workplace-collaboration-just-went-from-cold-war-to-giphy-hot