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Blackstone, Wellspring Team Up For Performance Food
The agreement, which isn’t subject to a financing condition, has a 50-day go-shop provision.
January 18, 2008
When the new year began it looked as if the large take-private buyout would be dormant through the first quarter. The Blackstone Group and Wellspring Capital Management, however, have dispelled that notion with their $1.3 billion agreement to acquire Performance Food Group.
The New York private equity firms have agreed to pay $34.50 for the Richmond, Va.-based food distributor’s Nasdaq-traded shares, marking a 42.6% premium over their closing price of $24.19 per share on Thursday.
Blackstone officials declined to comment on the public company purchase. But, in a statement Blackstone senior managing director Prakash Melwani said Performance Food Group is “extremely well positioned” to continue building on its strong history of growth as a high quality food distributor.
The agreement, which isn’t subject to a financing condition, has a 50-day go-shop provision.
Performance Food markets and distributes more than 68,000 national and private label food and food-related products to more than 41,000 restaurants, hotels cafeterias and hospitals.
The company is expected to remain headquartered in Richmond. Its board has approved the transaction.
Once the transaction closes Performance Food will be combined with Vistar, another foodservice distributor controlled by Blackstone and Wellspring.
Blackstone and Wellspring have agreed to pay a $40 million termination fee if they break their agreement to acquire Performance Food.
Evercore Partners is serving as financial advisor to Performance Food, which relied on Bass, Berry & Sims for counsel. Wachovia, Goldman Sachs and Credit Suisse are serving as financial advisors to Blackstone and Wellspring, which is relying on Simpson Thacher & Bartlett for counsel.
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