Word: ripplewood
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...history is any guide, the news will probably be yet another multimillion-dollar acquisition that will throw the spotlight once again on the 45-year-old Kentuckian and the company he named after his grandma's tobacco farm. Ripplewood Holdings might be little known in the U.S., but the private-equity firm, based in New York City, is virtually a household name in Japan, thanks to a $2.5 billion shopping spree in which it has grabbed national jewels, including a bank, a golf resort and a record label. The current deal may or may not involve KDDI, the Japanese phone...
...Japanese companies always prefer to sell to other Japanese companies," says Dean Yoost, CEO of a PricewaterhouseCoopers division in Tokyo that advises on mergers and acquisitions. The foreigner is the buyer of last resort. That means the price is often right: Ripplewood paid $130 million for Seagaia (with a commitment to invest $100 million)--a total that is only 8% of the $3 billion it cost to build the resort, which opened in 1994. But Ripplewood faces a turnaround task that is the corporate equivalent of raising the dead...
...record label Nippon Columbia, Ripplewood's task was less to redefine the business than to get back to it. Over the years the company had simply stopped producing hits, relying for sales revenue on the albums of enka queen Hibari Misora--who died in 1989. Nippon Columbia owned Denon, an audio-equipment maker, and odd assets such as real estate and golf memberships. The staff was bloated, the headquarters stuffy, and the company had not turned a profit in 10 years...
Collins hired a renowned industry talent, Strauss Zelnick, former CEO of BMG Entertainment, who in turn hired a respected Japanese record exec to scout for new pop and rock acts. Ripplewood spun off Denon and other non-core assets and slashed the staff. Even the building looks snazzier, with Sheryl Crow on video screens in the lobby alongside posters of young artists like Kiyoshi Hikawa and Charcoal Filter...
Collins turned Ripplewood's renamed Phoenix Seagaia Resort over to his fly-fishing buddy Michael Glennie, who had run the Boca Raton Resort and Club and the Waldorf Astoria in New York City, but who concedes that "this is a different challenge." Seagaia boasts five golf courses, four hotels and a convention center on six miles of Pacific coastline. It offers bowling, tennis and riding. It also has a water park called the Ocean Dome that costs $5 million a year to operate and includes simulated waves lapping at a beach made of imported crushed marble...