IIn the second FINANCE ‘Deal of the Year’ survey, which is the only survey of its kind, involving as it does both Ireland’s corporate finance community as well as the country’s top public companies, Madison Dearborn, the US private equity investment firm, €3.7 billion leveraged buy-out of the Jefferson Smurfit Group (JSG) was voted most admired deal of 2002 by the CEOs and financial directors of Ireland’s top plcs. One respondent to the survey said that they voted for the acquisition of Jefferson Smurfit due to the ‘sheer scale of the deal’. Another said it was because it was a ‘sensible deal and a good fit’, while a third said it was a ‘financially beneficial’ deal. In second place was M&T Bank’s merger with AIB’s US subsidiary AllFirst, and in third was Musgrave’s £167 million acquisition of UK based Budgens plc.
Speaking to FINANCE Thomas Souleles, managing director at Madison Dearborn, said that Madison Dearborn was initially attracted to JSG because it was a company whose management had demonstrated a history of vision and leadership in the industry. |
