By BOOYEON LEE
Staff Reporter
Local mergers and acquisitions held steady in February with 64 deals totaling $7.1 billion, up slightly from the previous month and the same number as a year ago.
Indeed, the number of mergers and acquisitions has averaged about 60 a month for the past year as the private equity market both nationally and locally has flourished.
“We have a really healthy M & A; market right now,” said Ed Villeneuve, managing director at Goldsmith Agio Helms, a Minneapolis-based investment bank that tracks M & A; activity for the Business Journal.
Consumer-related industries, such as food and retail, experienced the highest level of deal flow in February, with the top two acquisitions related to the nutrition-supplement market.
Los Angeles-based Herbalife Ltd. got a $38-a-share buyout offer from its largest shareholder, investment firm Whitney & Co. based in New Canaan, Conn. The $2.7 billion deal comes four years after Whitney and another private equity firm bought Herbalife for $685 million. The company went public two years later.
Herbalife, which sells weight-loss and nutritional supplements, has been trying to broaden its international reach and most recently became one of 20 companies to obtain a license from the Chinese government allowing direct sales to consumers in China.
Herbalife had experienced a 20 percent decline in value since forecasting lower sales in Mexico in January 2006.
Another top purchase was the $1.65 billion acquisition of GNC Parent Corp., parent company of General Nutrition Centers Inc., by Los Angeles-based Ares Management LLC and the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan. GNC, a Pittsburgh-based specialty retail chain selling supplements and health products, has 4,800 stores in the United States.
The food services sector saw one major deal. City of Commerce-based Smart & Final Inc. was sold to private equity firm Apollo Management LP of New York for $813 million. Apollo plans to work out a purchase agreement with Paris-based Casino Guichard-Perrachon SA, which owns 55 percent of Smart & Final’s common stock.
The media sector experienced the most activity in February, amounting to about a quarter of all mergers and acquisitions in Los Angeles. Getty Images Inc. of Seattle paid $202 million for Los Angeles-based Baroda Ventures LLC, which provides visual content for print and online media.
Two entertainment Web sites were acquired by Los Angeles-based Gemstar-TV Guide International Inc. for an undisclosed price.
