The buyer of Bauer Nike Hockey is a Canadian businessman, W. Graeme Roustan, supported by Kohlberg & Co., a 20-year-old American private equity firm. The purchase price is given as US$200 million, or about $50 million below the level that had been speculated in the Canadian press and close to what observers had expected.
Nike had last indicated that Bauer Hockey’s sales had kept more or less steady lately at an annual level of around US$150 million. By keeping the company in its portfolio of «other brands,» Nike would have probably had some problems in achieving a corporate goal to double their sales by 2011. The almost completed acquisition of Umbro should make it easier to get to that level.
Nike had bought the Bauer Hockey, formerly called Canstar, for $395 million in 1995. Shortly afterwards, Nike sold Canstar’s former manufacturing facilities in Italy, which have since changed their name from Bauer to Novation, a company that has since bought the Kayland brand of outdoor shoes, without its manufacturing facilities or its retail operations in Romania, and developed in high-tech areas.
Roustan’s holdings in arena facilities and finance, aviation, refrigeration and customized dasher systems should provide some synergies with Bauer, which is his first investment in the sporting goods sector.
The acquisition is expected to be completed before Nike’s financial year closes on May 31. Under its terms, the new owners will retain the use of the Nike Bauer trademark on existing products for up to two years. As of yet, it is unknown what brand name will be used after 2010.
The present Bauer Hockey business dates back to 1927. It was for many years linked to the Olivieri family in Italy. Roustan, 47, has dual U.S. and Canadian citizenship and has a strong background in hockey, a game that he began playing at the age of three. One year after emigrating to the USA in 1998, he was hired by the Californian office of a Wall Street investment firm to help lobby the National Hockey League for an expansion franchise.
Bauer Nike Hockey joins 14 companies in Kohlberg & Co’s portfolio. The company, founded in California in 1987, has completed 100 platform investments worth more than US$2 billion over the last 21 years.
