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Yearly Archives: 2013
The Blackstone Group agreed to acquire $200 million of newly issued Series A convertible preferred shares in Crocs. Crocs, in turn, plans to use the investment as part of a $350 million stock repurchase program that will reduce the company's publicly traded common stock float by about 30 percent. Also, Crocs chief executive John McCarvel announced his plans to retire in 2014.
To start your end-of-2013 week, First Read brings you news of a new gadget to protest NSA snooping, Facebook's country-by-country mobile growth stats and the theory behind the office design for startups like Instagram and Dropbox.
To end your holiday week, Second Opinion has news that Twitter shares have been crashing today, Target's Christmas nightmare has gotten worse and a federal judge has decided the NSA's bulk phone data collection program is legal.
French electrical and mechanical engineering group Spie is considering a stock market listing in late 2014, Les Echos newspaper reported on Friday.
Turkey's Yildiz Holding AS has agreed to buy privately owned DeMet's Candy Co, the U.S. maker of Flipz chocolate pretzels and Turtles covered nut clusters, for $221 million, the Wall Street Journal reported.
U.S. asset manager Fortress Investment Group LLC aims to raise 200 billion yen ($1.9 billion) to set up Japan's first infrastructure fund, sources told Reuters on Friday.
Brookwood Financial Partners has acquired The Embassy, a 10-story, multi-tenant office property located in the Las Colinas master-planned development of Irving, Texas. Brookwood plans to make more than $2 million in capital improvements to the property, including renovating the lobby, common area hallways, elevator cab interiors, bathrooms, exterior entrances and upgrading landscaping and mechanical systems.
DFW Capital Partners has closed DFW Capital Partners IV on $162.5 million, beating its $150 million target. Fund IV has already invested in three operating businesses -- Information Innovators, Covenant Surgical Partners and Sebela Pharmaceuticals. Griffin Financial Group worked as placement agent.
Plain Vanilla Games, which developed iPhone game QuizUp, has raised $22 million in funding. All existing investors participated in the funding around, including Tencent Holdings and Sequoia Capital. The funding brings total investments in Plain Vanilla Games to more than $27 million.
To finish off your abbreviated holiday week, First Read reveals a South Korean company wants consumers to communicate with their appliances, the biggest billionaire gainer this year was a casino mogul and crowdfunding for an app that tracks disturbances in earth's magnetic field as a way to detect UFOs.