Saratoga Partners In the News

You really have to tip your hat to a firm that makes nearly 10 times its money betting on coal tar and creosote.

KI Holdings Inc., the parent of Pittsburgh-based Koppers Inc., said Monday, Nov. 22, it will award New York private equity firm Saratoga Partners LP and other stockholders a $95 million special dividend.

Saratoga Partners has completed a $430 million recapitalization of its Pittsburgh portfolio company Koppers Inc.

"Creditors will receive 100 cents on the dollar for their claims and we will be the controlling shareholders," said Chris Oberbeck, managing director of Saratoga Partners

Advanced Lighting Technologies Inc. has sweetened the pot for creditors

New York buyout shop Saratoga Partners banded together against stalking-horse bidder Golden Gate Capital in a grueling 26-hour marathon auction in Boston.

Golden Gate Capital and Saratoga Partners were both on the winning sides of bids for the bankrupt company's assets, and each walked away with what they considered to be some of divine's most attractive parts.

"The amount of time and money that Sarbanes-Oxley is costing the system is enormous," says managing director Christian Oberbeck of New York buyout firm Saratoga Partners.

Christian Oberbeck, managing director of Saratoga Partners, said Micros represents "a home for the company that is totally compatible and complementary. We believe Micros is an excellent company and we're pleased to be new shareholders."

Christian Oberbeck, a managing director with New York private equity firm Saratoga Partners, believes Vertis' offering bodes well. "I think it's a positive indication that there's some opportunity to use high-yield financing, perhaps to refinance some existing bank debt."

Buyout professionals like Saratoga's Oberbeck say that banks used to lend at three to four times senior debt and provide total debt-to-cash multiples of six times. "Now they are saying we want 2.5 times senior debt but no more than 3.5 times [for total debt]."

[CEO Davis] said he is particularly happy about a New York City venture capital company investing in upstate New York. "A downstate VC firm pumping money into the Capital District, that's a nice story," Davis said. "There hasn't been a lot of that."

New York-based Saratoga Partners has acquired Aptis Inc., a telecommunications billing and customer care software provider with offices in San Antonio and upstate New York.

[Grandma]'s never had much interest in my work as a leveraged-buyout specialist who invests in troubled companies. The next time I see her, I know my grandmother will ask about her AT&T shares. In light of AT&T's latest headline-grabbing losses, she will want to know what I think of its prospects, especially the breakup plans that would split it into four different companies.


"Grandma," I'm going to tell her, "you and I are now in the same business."

"Short-sellers usually do their homework," said Christian Oberbeck, managing director of Saratoga Partners, a New York investment fund active in PIPE investment. "If they see toxic components to a financing, they will know how to take advantage and can accelerate the spiral."

Christian Oberbeck, a managing director at Saratoga Partners, said it's too early to tell if the deals herald an opening for buyout firms. "Most of these deals are pretty high quality. This is the end of the high-yield spectrum that you would expect to recover first," he said.

"The implication of the retrenchment in debt financing is that it will be very hard to do larger corporate buyouts," said Christian Oberbeck, a managing director at Saratoga Partners, a New York private equity firm.

[T]he top managers' hometown had little to do with the new HQ location, claimed Christian Oberbeck, a partner with New York City-based Saratoga Partners, which owns PTS. "Our strategy is to build a national service provider for construction and maintenance of cell sites," Mr. Oberbeck said. "While we have a significant regional presence in Atlanta, we expect to have a national footprint in the very near future."

Preferred Technical installs and maintains the antennas and cables on radio towers and rooftops that allow signals to be transmitted and received. Backed by $20 million in funding from Saratoga Partners of New York, the company plans to develop a larger presence to better position it to serve the national market

An affiliate of Saratoga Partners, a New York-based merchant bank, will pay $55 million for Preferred Technical Services. The company will pay $4 million in cash and provide maintenance services to Preferred Networks' paging networks.

After the management group's buy, Saratoga Partners, an investment fund managed by SBC Warburg Dillon Read Inc. in New York, still holds a majority ownership stake of 55 percent.

Founded in 1994, USI has been rapidly acquiring insurance brokerages throughout the country and now ranks as the nation's ninth-largest brokerage. The company's growth has been fueled through financial backing from Saratoga Partners, an investment fund managed by Dillon, Read & Co., several institutional investors and USI management.