News briefs - Corporate and M&A – Page 46
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News briefs
S&P downgrades Callaway for its merger with Topgolf
The pro forma debt/Ebitda ratio of about 8 times given for the company formed by the merger of Callaway Golf with Topgolf has led Standard & Poor’s to downgrade the credit rating of Callaway to B from B+, and the agency indicated that it could lower it further. As Callaway ...
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News briefs
Former Nike executives help found minority-owned sports marketing agency
Three former Nike executives – David Creech, president of brand creative for global men’s; Nicole Graham, vice president of global brand marketing; and Josh Moore, vice president and global head of design for digital, stores and content – have joined the sports agent Rich Paul to found Adopt, a minority-owned ...
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News briefsVF’s new fulfillment center for the U.K. begins operations
Working through a local subsidiary, VF Northern Europe, VF Corporation has begun operations at its new fulfillment center in Bardon, Leicestershire, which will employ about 250 people at peak times. The new 55,800-square-meter center will have “state-of-the-art automation capabilities putting it at the forefront of the footwear and apparel industry,” ...
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News briefs
HandsFree Labs, licensor for Nike's Go FlyEase, gets $3 million in funding round
HandsFree Labs, the Utah-based company that partnered with Nike to create the Go FlyEase laceless clog due to become available on nike.com on Apr. 30 for $120 per pair, has raised $3 million in a new round of funding led by the Frazier Group. The hands-free footwear technology company had ...
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News briefsPuma starts shipping online orders from its new German DC
After more than two years of construction, Puma’s new distribution center in Geiselwind, Germany, started to operate on Apr. 6. It will help the company to better fulfill its online orders, which have remained until now relatively low as compared to those of Adidas or Nike. With 480 shuttles navigating ...
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News briefs
Moody’s confirms Adidas’ A2 rating
Completing a periodic review of Adidas, the rating agency Moody’s confirms its A2 credit rating; which it assigned one year ago when the group obtained a €3 billion loan to prop up its liquidity during the coronavirus pandemic. Moody’s mentioned among the positive factors Adidas’ long track record, its leading ...
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News briefs
Lenders take control of Sequential’s board
Four out of the eight members of Sequential Brands Group’s board of directors have resigned as required by the extension until Apr. 19, 2021 of a credit agreement with Wilmington Trust and other lenders. The remaining members on the board represent mostly lenders such as KKR and Blackstone Group. The ...
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News briefs
New shareholders and new deal with Superdry for We aRe SpinDye
Five shareholders have bought half of the shares held in We aRe SpinDye (WRSD) by its chairman, Christian Rasmussen, reducing his stake to 13.29 percent. The shareholders are Ilja Batljan, Patrik Tillman, Rutger Arnhult, Stefan Hansson and Erik Björklund. They paid a total of for 20,016,285 Swedish kronor (€1.94m-$22.9m) in ...
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News briefs
Peloton completes the acquisition of Precor
Peloton Interactive has completed its acquisition of Precor, the American producer of fitness equipment that was part of Amer Sports until the Anta-led consortium agreed to divest it last December for a price of $420 million in cash, with adjustments for working capital, transaction expenses, cash and debt. In announcing ...
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News briefs
Tonal mulls IPO after reaching a $1.6bn valuation, with no exports yet
Tonal, which describes itself as the smartest home gym, has not yet shipped or installed its equipment outside the U.S., and its website says it doesn’t have a timeline on when it will make the move. After expanding in all the 50 other U.S. states, it became available in Hawaii ...
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News briefs
Fishbrain secures $31 million in funding
Fishbrain, the developer of a sport fishing app based in Stockholm, has raised $31 million in funding. The backers include Consensus Småbolagsfond and Adrigo Asset Management, as well as all main existing shareholders including B Capital Group and SoftBank Ventures Asia. Fishbrain will use the funding to continue to expand ...
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News briefs
Frasers acquires retail park near Manchester
Frasers Group has acquired the estate of the Robin Retail Park in the town of Wigan, just outside Manchester in the U.K. The terms of the sale have not been disclosed. According to Drapers, however, Otium Real Estate paid £12 million (€14m-$17m) for the property in March 2020. Among the ...
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News briefs
New funding round values Fanatics at $12.8 bn
Fanatics raised another $350 million from existing shareholders in a round that valued the giant U.S.-based online licensed apparel group at $12.8 billion. It was more than double the $6.2 billion valuation that it received through a previous $350 million round last August. Investors thought at the time that it ...
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News briefs
Peloton makes new acquisitions, moves into Australia
Peloton has announced the completion of three new acquisitions: Aiquido, a company that has developed an AI-power digital voice assistant; Atlas Wearables, a producer of fitness-centered smartwatches; and Otari, the developer of an interactive workout mat with an attached LCD screen. In another new initiative, it announced earlier this month ...
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News briefs
Yeezy is valued at over $3.2 bn
Sales of sneakers resulting from Yeezy’s collaboration with Adidas grew by 31 percent to nearly $1.7 billion in 2020, according to a document compiled by UBS, details of which were reported by Bloomberg. According to the Swiss bank, the partnership generated $191 million in royalties for Yeezy, the sneaker and ...
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News briefs
Asics selects four start-ups for its business partnership accelerator program
Asics has unveiled four proposals that it has selected this time in the framework of the Asics Accelerator Program, its business partnership accelerator program for start-ups. The four selected start-ups are: Japan HealthCare (Grand Prize) for its proposal on “Kids Foot Health Checkup for Your Smartphone;” Paronym (Award of Excellence) ...
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News briefs
LeBron James becomes partner at FSG, the owner of Boston Red Sox and Liverpool
LeBron James has bought an undisclosed number of shares in Fenway Sports Group (FSG). The transaction, which was first reported by the Boston Globe, makes him a part-owner of the Boston Red Sox, Roush Fenway Racing, and New England Sports Network (NESN), all parts of John Henry’s holding company. James ...
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News briefs
Nike plans to cut by half its office staff in Spain
Nike is planning to reduce its office workforce in Spain by half, after streamlining its operations in Germany and the Nordic countries. According to reports in Palco23, a Barcelona-based sport business periodical, Nike is about to file a restructuring plan (ERE = “expediente de regulación de empleo”) that would involve ...
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News briefs
Lululemon’s chairman wants to invest with KKR
Working together with KKR, the big American investment group, Glenn Murphy, chairman of Lululemon, has created a special-purpose acquisition company (SPAC) that has started trading on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol KAHC, following an oversubscribed public offering worth $1.2 billion. The purpose of the new SPAC, whose ...
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News briefs
Rocky Brands closes Honeywell footwear's takeover
Rocky Brands has completed its $230 million acquisition of the performance and lifestyle footwear operations of Honeywell International, noting that it will be immediately accretive to its own results. The business, which includes The Original Muck Boot Company and the Xtratuf, Servus, NEOS and Ranger brands, generated Ebitda of about ...
