M&A wrap: Great Hill, TodayTix, Goldman, United Capital, Golden Gate, Advent

Great Hill Partners has made a $73 million growth equity investment in entertainment ticketing company TodayTix. The target is is an online platform that sells best-priced tickets to arts and cultural entertainment, including musicals, plays and Broadway shows. “By understanding the ways next-generation audiences purchase and experience shows, we can forever change the way people discover art in their cities,” says TodayTix CEO Brian Fenty. “Our audiences, married with a community of visionary content creators, establish an unprecedented ecosystem of engagement between the two sides of live entertainment." TodayTix, founded in 2013, works with more than 1,300 partners in 15 markets including New York, London, Toronto and San Francisco, and has sold more than 4 million tickets to date. “TodayTix is rapidly changing the way millennials and other consumers connect with live cultural experiences,” adds Great Hill managing partner Michael Kumin. Great Hill invests up to $200 million across the e-commerce, digital media and healthcare technology industries. The firm is currently featured in Mergers & Acquisitions' look at 5 information technology trends driving M&A in healthcare. For more, see Healthcare's must-have technologies. Healthcare companies are spending more on information technology than ever before. Private equity firms including Bain Capital, Great Hill Partners, GTCR, New Heritage Capital and the Riverside Co. are investing in the innovations most in demand, including big data, Software-as-a-Service and artificial intelligence. See 5 private equity-backed healthcare technology deals. DEAL NEWS Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS) is buying United Capital for $750 million. United has approximately $25 billion in AUM, $230 million in revenue and close to 100 offices around the country. It also owns the FinLife CX digital platform and financial planning software offering. Read the full story: Goldman buys United Capital in ‘huge validation’ for RIA business. KPS Capital Partners is acquiring Howden from Colfax Corp. (NYSE: CFX) for $1.8 billion. Howden is a provider of air and gas handling products to the industrial, power, oil & gas, and mining industries. Advisors to KPS include: J.P. Morgan (NYSE: JPM), RBC Capital Markets and Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP. The legal advisor to Colfax is Baker Botts. Chemicals producer Arkema Group is buying ArrMaz, a maker of chemicals and materials for crop nutrients and asphalt paving, from Golden Gate Capital for $570 million. Advisors to Golden Gate and ArrMaz include: Lazard Middle Market, Moelis & Co. (NYSE: MC), Nob Hill Law Group and Kirkland & Ellis. The advisors to Arkema include Valence Group and Proskauer. Advent International is buying AccentCare, a provider of post-acute healthcare services, from Oak Hill Capital Partners. Advisors to Advent include: Barclays, RBC, Deutsche Bank and Ropes & Gray. Advisors to the target include: Harris Williams, J.P. Morgan (NYSE: JPM) and Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison. Clearlake-backed Wheels Pros is merging with MHT Luxury Wheels, to form a new automotive wheels manufacturing and distribution company. Financing was provided by Antares, Deutsche Bank, ING and UBS. Real estate investment firm Iintoo has acquired Realtyshares as part of a joint venture that increased Iintoo's portfolio size from $1 billion to $2.5 billion in assets under management. PEOPLE MOVES Noah Carr, Stuart Beraha and Ivan Smallwood have joined law firm Latham & Watkins as partners. They were previously with Morrison & Foerster and advise Japanese companies on cross-border M&A. FEATURED CONTENT Call for nominations: Mergers & Acquisitions has opened up the nomination process for the second annual 2019 Rising Stars of Private Equity. Last year, we named 11 PE investors to the list, including Ethan Liebermann, who was recently promoted from principal to director of TA Associates, and Jennifer Roach Pacini, a vice president of Yellow Wood Partners. For the Rising Stars of Private Equity, we look for individuals who are full-time private equity investors and whose best days are yet to come. These are the folks you predict will one day play a key leadership role at your PE firm – or will head up their own. There is no age cutoff. As a general rule of thumb, we are looking for candidates beyond entry-level investing but before making partner. We publish the list online in July and in the July/August issue of the magazine. The deadline for nominations is end of day Thursday, May 23, 2019. Nominations will be accepted only through our online form. There is no fee. CLICK HERE TO NOMINATE A RISING STAR OF PRIVATE EQUITY Click here for the 2018 Rising Stars of Private Equity. Technology is revolutionizing the healthcare industry and fueling an explosion of transactions. Some of the most promising areas of innovation are: big data, medical devices, revenue cycle management, Software-as-a-Service and payment processing. “Healthcare IT is the largest cottage industry in the world,” says Sam Hendler, who leads healthcare IT deals at Harris Williams, which recently won Mergers & Acquisitions’ 2018 M&A Mid-Market Award for Investment Bank of the Year. “Healthcare IT is a highly fragmented, multi-billion-dollar market with thousands of companies focused on different $250 million to $500 million sub-markets. Savvy investors see there is an opportunity to aggregate assets and build platforms of scale. It’s an incredibly exciting time in healthcare IT.” For an in-depth look at five technologies driving M&A in healthcare, see Healthcare's must-have technologies. Excelled. Innovated. Inspired. That’s what the eight winners of Mergers & Acquisitions’ 12th Annual M&A Mid-Market Awards did in 2018. Our awards honor the leading dealmakers and deals that set the standard for transactions in the middle market. In addition to Nike, award winners include: Fortive, TA Associates, the Riverside Co., Harris Williams, Monroe Capital, Goodwin and Luminate Capital Partners' Hollie Haynes. Read our full coverage: Meet the winners of the M&A Mid-Market Awards: Nike, Fortive, TA, Harris Williams. Technology permeates dealmaking today. “Tech is, more or less, touching everything,” as the authors of the 2019 BDO Technology Outlook Survey put it. You can see the impact of tech throughout the 2018 winners of Mergers & Acquisitions’ M&A Mid-Market Awards, especially Luminate Capital Partners founder Hollie Hayne scoring Dealmaker of the Year for raising a second fund to invest in enterprise software companies and TA Associates winning Private Equity Firm of the Year for investing a record $2.8 billion in new portfolio companies, most of which are infused with technology. Related: Why private equity firms still love technology Related: 10 private equity firms share strategies for tech M&A. Genstar Capital, Audax and HarbourVest ranked as the top U.S. private equity firms of 2018, based on volume of completed deals, according to PitchBook. Check out Mergers & Acquisitions' profiles of 21 firms that led the league tables. Top private equity firms: Genstar, Audax, HarbourVest. Also see: Top investment banks in PE-backed deals: KPMG, Houlihan, GS, William Blair. Mergers & Acquisitions has named 36 leaders the 2019 Most Influential Women in Mid-Market M&A, including Kainos Capital's Sarah Bradley, Kayne Anderson Capital Advisors' Nishita Cummings and Pelham S2K Managers' Venita Fields. All 36 are outstanding dealmakers both inside and outside of their firms. This year, we asked the featured dealmakers to tell their own stories through Q&As, including their advice for women. Related: Meet the 2019 Most Influential Women in Mid-Market M&A. EVENTS Innovation Works holds its second annual AI/Robotics Venture Fair in Pittsburgh May 15-16. ACG Chicago hosts the Midwest Capital Connection, at The Marriott Downtown Magnificent Mile, May 21-22. ACG New York, ACG Boston and ACG Philadelphia are holding the Industrial Conference with Value Creation at the Infor in New York on June 6. The event is part of the Northeast Industry Tour. ACG Minnesota hosts the the Upper Midwest ACG Capital Connection at the Renaissance Minneapolis Hotel, The Depot, June 10-11. ACG Boston brings together 700-plus dealmakers for DealFest Northeast and DealSource Select 2019 at the Cyclorama and the State Room, June 12-13. Exponent Women hosts the Annual Exchange, which brings a trusted network of women dealmakers together for a focused day of robust content and networking, at Second in New York, on July 11. The Exchange provides attendees with opportunities to establish new connections, reinforce existing ones and absorb timely and relevant knowledge from industry leaders.