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Tuesday, Oct 29th

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Mergers

Miramax Bidding

MiramaxDisney is on the look out of a buyer for its struggling Miramax Unit. According to a mergers and acquisitions expert, the Miramax film unit of the Walt Disney Company is open for bidding and has attracted around 10 bidders. The film unit has a 700-film library that includes films like ‘Pulp Fiction’ and ‘Shakespeare in Love’. The initial discussions imply a price of over $700 million for the art house label.

Miramax delivered specialty films like “Chicago”, “The Queen”, “Kill Bill”, “No Country for Old Men” and “The English Patient” and many of the films in the library were nominated for more than 200 Academy Awards. Disney has been looking to find a bidder for the label and scale down its division even announcing the closure of Miramax in October.

Summit Entertainment is a potential buyer while the Weinstein brothers who founded Miramax are not among the bidders till now. Summit Entertainment is the privately owned studio that released ‘Twilight’ blockbusters and is currently rich in cash. However, it doesn’t have a large library.

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Greenhill Supports Acrisur

Greenhill-Supports-AcrisureGreenhill Capital Partners is backing Acrisure, a Michigan-based insurance agency operator, by investing $20 million. The PE firm’s deal plans to back the mergers and acquisitions minded insurance company’s expansion.

Greenhill Capital Partners is currently managing four PE funds consisting of two US private equity funds, a European PE fund and a US venture capital fund. They have a successful track record investing in energy, insurance, telecommunications, financial services, telecommunications and education and business services industries.

Seventeen separate deals build Acrisure and the private equity firm’s investment in the firm will be utilized to support the future growth initiatives of the company. The size of the stake provided to the firm has not been disclosed and calls needing comments have not been returned either.

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Diamond Castle Acquires Suture Express

Diamond-Castle-Acquires-SutDiamond Castle Partners is a New York based equity firm which bought Suture Express Inc. Suture Express is a distributor of disposable medical and surgical products. Linden LLC and CHS Private Equity LP are the investment arms of Code Hennessy & Simmons LLC. They are a group of investors who exited the company after an ownership of more than three years.

These PE investors had initially bought the company from its founders and have made great contributions in expanding the company’s product offerings and customer base. The joint private equity ownership team helped improve the customer base of Suture Express and its product offerings alike.

Diamond Castle Partners have bought the disposable medical products company, Suture Express Inc. Diamond Castle Partners has made investments across various fields including entertainment, Internet and technology, advertising and media, manufacturing and food services industries.

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Cephalon To Own Mepha

Cephalon-to-own-MephaUS drugmaker Cephalon Inc is planning to expand into generic drug business to diversify its product line. With an increase in its shares by 1.5 percent, the company is looking to expand internationally. Cephalon announced that they would be buying Mepha AG for about $590 million for expansion.

Mepha AG, the Swiss generic drugmaker is owned by Germany’s Merckle family and markets above 120 products in 50 countries. Mepha had sales of about $377 million in 2009 and Cephalon is looking to double the size of its international business with the deal.

Cephalon gained popularity with its sleep disorder drug Provigil. Nuvigil, its successor drug, also features in its product line along with pain product Fentora and cancer drug Treanda. Mepha features multiple products including Diclofenac for pain, as gel and patch. The merger move by Cephalon denotes a departure from its usual mergers and acquisitions strategy.

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