Investment begins the next chapter of innovation and expansion by the enterprise cloud leader

September 26, 2022 10:49 AM EDT

CHICAGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--AHEAD, a leading provider of enterprise cloud services, today announced a definitive agreement for funds advised by Berkshire Partners LLC to acquire a majority stake in the company from Centerbridge Partners, L.P.

In October 2020, Centerbridge and Berkshire Partners made a joint investment to support the growth of AHEAD, with Centerbridge acquiring a majority stake. Since their investment, both firms partnered with the company’s leadership team to create significant equity value, driving AHEAD’s highly relevant and differentiated digital solutions portfolio of cloud, data, and application-related services into a more focused enterprise account base, and completing multiple strategic and highly complementary acquisitions.

Berkshire Partners is making an additional investment to become majority shareholder and leverage its specialist sector expertise in technology, business services, and digital infrastructure to help fuel AHEAD’s further expansion. The AHEAD management team and its employees, led by founder and CEO Daniel Adamany, will continue to own a significant portion of the business, and Centerbridge will retain a minority stake.

“We’re grateful for the support of both firms over the last two years, as we made material improvements to the business to not just deliver exceptional near-term results but set the stage for future scale and growth. The expanded investment by our colleagues at Berkshire, along with the continued support of Centerbridge, will help us further innovate and mature a services portfolio that helps our clients fundamentally transform how they run their businesses and serve their own customers,” said CEO Adamany.

“AHEAD is a very special company. Dan and his team are highly focused on delivering best-in-class technology solutions to their enterprise customers, and on building a vibrant, client-centric culture,” said Larry Hamelsky, a Managing Director at Berkshire Partners and Drew Walker, a Principal at Berkshire Partners. “We’re thrilled to be deepening our collaboration with the team and look forward to supporting their next chapter of innovation and growth.”

“The AHEAD team has performed phenomenally during our time working together,” said Jared Hendricks, a Senior Managing Director at Centerbridge and Chris Litchford, a Managing Director at Centerbridge. “We are gratified by the significant value creation that has occurred through our partnership with the AHEAD team since investing in 2020 and look forward to continuing as an investor in the business.”

Barclays and SVB Securities served as joint lead financial advisors to AHEAD and Centerbridge on the transaction. Kirkland & Ellis LLP served as legal counsel to AHEAD and Centerbridge. Guggenheim Securities served as financial advisor to Berkshire Partners. Ropes & Gray LLP served as legal counsel to Berkshire Partners.

About AHEAD

AHEAD builds platforms for digital business. Combining cloud-native capabilities in software and data engineering with an unparalleled track record of modernizing infrastructure, we are uniquely positioned to help clients accelerate the promise of digital transformation. For more, visit www.ahead.com.

About Berkshire Partners

Berkshire Partners is a 100% employee-owned, multi-sector specialist investment firm that invests in well-positioned, growing companies across technology and communications, consumer, healthcare, and business services and industrials. Since inception, Berkshire Partners has made more than 150 private equity investments and has a strong history of collaborating with management teams to grow the companies in which it invests. For additional information, and to see a full list of the firm’s private equity investments, visit www.berkshirepartners.com.

About Centerbridge Partners

Centerbridge Partners, L.P. is a private investment management firm employing a flexible approach across investment disciplines – private equity, credit, and real estate – to develop the most attractive opportunities for our investors. The Firm was founded in 2005 and as of June 30, 2022, has approximately $34 billion in capital under management with offices in New York and London. Centerbridge is dedicated to partnering with world-class management teams across targeted industry sectors and geographies. For more information, please visit www.centerbridge.com.