Winners Announced for the 10th Annual M&A Awards at New York Gala
Dec-23, 2011
Villani travelled to New York to pick up the Middle-Market Deal of the Year title – a category that recognizes transactions in the $100 million to under $250 million range – at the 10th annual awards M & A Advisor awards ceremony held at the New York Athletic Club in New York City on Tuesday night.
Fasken was one of four law firms — Swiss law firms Homburger AG and Wenger & Vieli Ltd. and Kirkland & Ellis LLP and Seward & Kissel LLP of the United States were the others – recognized for putting together the complex multi-jurisdictional deal the companies say creates the world’s largest independent cross-channel electronic-commerce software business.
Working alongside Villani, who heads up Fasken’s Quebec mergers and acquisitions practice, were Claude Jodoin (tax), Jean-Philippe Mikus (technology and intellectual property), Nathalie-Anne Béliveau (labour) and Jean-François Séguin (corporate/commercial).They represented minority shareholders in the newly-combined company.
Terms were not disclosed but Huntsman Gay will become the majority stakeholder of the newly combined company – to be known as hybris software — with headquarters in Munich and North American operations housed in Montreal.
Fasken’s Montreal team had first advised iCongo in an asset stake sale to Huntsman Gay, a $1.1-billion private equity fund with offices in California, Florida, Massachusetts and Utah, in a deal sealed in November 2010.
The company’s management team and shareholders, including iCongo president Stephen Kramer and chief executive Irwin Kramer, retained an important minority position. Management teams from both companies and shareholders retain a minority ownership stake in the buyout and ultimate merger deal by Huntsman Gay that combines hybris business operations with those of iCongo.
iCongo, founded in Montreal 1998 “in the wild days of the Internet rush,” as Irwin Kramer says in an video interview on the company’s website has been expanding rapidly in cross-channel commerce not only for large retailers – including big Montreal-based companies with international reach like Aldo, La Senza, and Gildan – but for industrial companies using its software infrastructure for marketing and inventory management and for virtual tradeshows. Hear more about Kramer’s take on cross-channel commerce expansion here.