Lower Middle Market Weekly Outlook

Happy Cinco de Mayo, all.

While many articles from this weekend focus on Berkshire’s annual meeting and the Oracle of Omaha, below are a few stories specific to the middle market and lower middle market to start your week off right.

Transactions:

• Tall Tree Foods acquires Klement Sausage Company
• Smith & Wesson acquires Tri Town Precision Plastics
• TA Associates buys majority of Bomgar
• TripAdvisor acquires Tripbod
• Silver Oak Services invests in iSystems
• CompTIA buys TechAmerica
• Thoma Bravo raises $3.65 billion fund for buyouts
• C.H. Guenther & Son acquires Tribeca Oven
• Arsenal Capital Partners is considering selling Charter Brokerage
• Aequitas Capital invests $110 million in Freedom Financial Network

Regulatory/Legal: Read the latest Private Fund Update on the House Financial Services Committee upcoming markup on sixteen bills, last week’s HFSC oversight hearing with SEC Chairwoman Mary Jo White, and the SEC’s recent Risk Alert on cybersecurity issues for investment advisers.

Events:

• Wednesday Webinar: SEC’s OCIE Exam Issue for Middle Market PE Funds
• Thursday Webinar: Deciding When to Sell Your Company

Opinions:

• Nordic PE deal activity expected to rise
• The fracking boom and the fall of a Texas utility
• 6 things I learned at Buffett’s annual meeting
• The Cadbury deal: How it changed takeovers
• With hospital mergers, how big is too big?
• Should these three tech mergers already have happened?
• Budget cutbacks spurring military mergers
• Will PE bid for the L.A. Clippers?

This week in history… Chrysler Corp mergers with Daimler-Benz AG in a $38 billion transaction (1998).