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• Case | HBS Case Collection | 2013

  Brazos Partners and the Tri-Northern Exit

  Matthew Rhodes-Kropf and Nathaniel Burbank

  Randall Fojtasek, a partner at the Dallas-based Brazos Private Equity Partners, must decide whether now is the time to sell his firm's investment in Tri-Northern Distribution. Brazos, a middle-market leveraged buyout group, created the company two years earlier through the acquisition of two electronic security distribution companies: Tri-Ed Distribution and Northern Video Systems. Twenty-four months after successfully integrating the two companies, Brazos has received two attractive offers for the combined distributor. With the company's management projecting double-digit growth for 2012, however, it is far from clear that now is the optimal time to exit for the firm's third fund.

  Keywords: Private Equity Exit; LBO; Leveraged Buyout Transaction; Texas; Distribution, Security; Brazos; Tri-Northern; Tri-Ed; Northern Video; private equity;

  Citation:

  Rhodes-Kropf, Matthew, and Nathaniel Burbank. "Brazos Partners and the Tri-Northern Exit." Harvard Business School Case 813-157, March 2013.

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• Case | HBS Case Collection | 2013 (Revised from original 2011 version)

  Investcorp and the Moneybookers Bid

  Matthew Rhodes-Kropf and Carin-Isabel Knoop

  In January 2007, Hazem Ben-Gacem, managing director and co-head of Investcorp Technology Partners (ITP), needs to decide what to bid at an auction for Moneybookers Limited, one of the top three e-payment solution providers in Europe. However, approximately 70% of Moneybookers revenues were related to transactions from online gaming sites (down from 100% in 2002). Although the thesis was that e-commerce transactions would soon make up a much larger chunk of the company's revenues, high gaming revenue still raised some questions. Between now and when Ben-Gacem had first submitted a bid of 60 million for Moneybookers back in November 2006, the U.S. Congress had enacted the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act putting pressure on e-payment firms with gambling exposure. How would investors in ITP view this transaction? Ben-Gacem also worried about whether Moneybookers could manage the growth of its business and the evolution of regulation around monetary transactions. Moneybookers had effectively become a type of bank with deposit accounts and capital adequacy requirements and all the reporting that went along with it. But could an internet startup maintain the compliance and accounting standards necessary to handle such scrutiny? Could it succeed-and if it did, what would it be worth?

  Keywords: Business Startups; Games, Gaming, and Gambling; Private Equity; Investment; Auctions; Bids and Bidding; Valuation; Europe; United States;

  Citation:

  Rhodes-Kropf, Matthew, and Carin-Isabel Knoop. "Investcorp and the Moneybookers Bid." Harvard Business School Case 811-013, March 2013. (Revised from original February 2011 version.)

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• Case | HBS Case Collection | 2013 (Revised from original 2012 version)

  The Canada Pension Plan Investment Board: October 2012

  Josh Lerner, Matthew Rhodes-Kropf and Nathaniel Burbank

  The Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB) is one of the largest and fastest-growing pools of investment capital in the world and follows an unusually active program of investment management. In October of 2012, Mark Wiseman was just 12 weeks into his role as chief executive officer, and he must decide how to lead the organization to outperform the market as it grows larger and more geographically disperse. After seven years of eschewing the use of intermediaries and successfully practicing its "do-it-yourself mega-investing" approach, CPPIB had garnered admiration from institutions on Bay Street and Wall Street alike. It had even been heralded as a "Maple Revolutionary" by The Economist. With assets under management projected to grow to C$275 billion by 2020, however, Wiseman faced the challenge of how to scale the organization's investment strategy for the future. As Wiseman settled into the chief executive’s role, would he be able to lead CPPIB to meet its goals?

  Keywords: Canada; CPPIB; Pensions; Private Equity; Financial Services Industry; Canada;

  Citation:

  Lerner, Josh, Matthew Rhodes-Kropf, and Nathaniel Burbank. "The Canada Pension Plan Investment Board: October 2012." Harvard Business School Case 813-103, January 2013. (Revised from original October 2012 version.)

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