General Atlantic Buys 25% Of ProSieben’s €1.8B Digital Business

PRIVATE EQUITY NEWS – Feb 22 – U.S. private-equity firm General Atlantic has bought a 25% stake in NuCom Group, the digital business of German media company ProSiebenSat.1 Media SE. The deal valued NuCom at €1.8B, including debt, ProSieben said in a statement. The unit consists of 10 businesses, including online dating site Parship Elite Group and energy price-comparison business Verivox, and generated ~€650M of revenue in 2017. As part of the deal, ProSieben and General Atlantic have bought the minority stakes in Verivox and Parship held by Oakley Capital. The London buyout firm retained minority stakes in both businesses when it sold them to ProSieben in 2015 and 2016 respectively. Parship delivered an nearly five-times return on Oakley's invested capital, while the Verivox investment returned two and a half times its money.