The Madison Dearborn Partners is a private equity firm founded in 1992. Based in Chicago, Illinois, the firm offers specialized services that are relevant in the leveraged buyout of either privately held or publicly traded companies, as well as subsidiaries of a larger company, recapitalizations of closely held or family owned companies, acquisition financings, restructuring of balance sheets, and growth capital investments in highly developed companies.
Previously, the founders of the firm completed private equity investments for the First Chicago Bank. The firm’s chairman, John Canning, Jr., also holds a position as a minority owner of the Milwaukee Brewers baseball team.
Headed by a group of prominent visionaries, the Madison Dearborn Partners teamed up with Michael Eisner’s Tormante investment company on 2007 in order to purchase the baseball card maker Topps Company. For two consecutive years, the firm successfully completed a bunch of publicly traded companies including CDW, LA Fitness, Asurion, Nuveen Investments, Univision Communications, VWR International, Sorenson Communications, and the Yankee Candle.
On June 30 of the same year, the Bell Canada Enterprises (or the BCE) announced that the company entered into a definitive agreement that allowed Bell Canada Enterprises to be purchased with adherence to a certain plan of arrangement made by an investor group headed by the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan’s private investment arm, the Teachers Private Capital, as well as the Providence Equity Partners Inc., and the Madison Dearborn Partners. The all-cash transaction was valued at a total of C$51.7 billion, or US$48.5 billion, with the inclusion of C$16.9 billion worth of preferred equity, debt, as well as minority interests. The agreement was then approved on September of 2007 during a special meeting attended by a group of shareholders. The agreement was decided upon by more than 97% of the total votes casted by the holders of preferred and common shares.
