The process will begin immediately and be complete by the end of May 2013, Nike said.

In April, smaller rival German sportswear group Adidas said it plans to slash the number of products it offers by one-quarter to improve profitability.

Beaverton, Oregon-based Nike is the top sportswear company in the world, and anticipates high demand for its swoosh-marked clothing and shoes. However, there have been concerns about margins as sales have not been able to offset rising prices of materials including cotton, plastic and fuel.

Most of Nike’s sales come from its namesake brand. The Jordan, Converse and Hurley brands, which also sell sports and casual wear, are seen as natural complements to the core Nike line.

Nike acquired Cole Haan, which specializes in leather shoes and bags, in 1988. It acquired Umbro, which makes soccer shoes, in 2008.

(Reporting By Nivedita Bhattacharjee in Chicago, Martinne Geller in New York; Editing by Gerald E. McCormick and Maureen Bavdek)

Image Credit: Nike.com

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Yesterday, Goldman’s private equity fund and P2 Capital agreed to buy Interline Brands for about $1.1 billion or $25.50 per share cash. Lenders on the deal, Goldman and Bank of America, have committed to providing about $928 million in debt, according to Thomson Reuters Loan Pricing Corp.

GS Capital is injecting $369.3 million equity into the deal, according to an SEC filing. P2 Capital, which owns about 8% of Interline, is putting in $6.4 million and 927,386 shares of stock, the filing said.

Moody’s put Interline under review for possible downgrade. The company has a corporate family rating of “B1″ and probability of default at “B1,” Moody’s said.

Jacksonville, Fla.-based Interline is a distributor and direct marketer of maintenance, repair and operations products. Interline’s largest two categories are janitorial/sanitation products followed by plumbing products, Moody’s said. The company produced about $1.3 billion in revenues for the 12 months through March 31, Moody’s said.

P2 Capital is a New York hedge fund run by Claus Moller that invests like a PE firm. Founded in 2006, P2 reportedly calls itself a “friendly activist” fund, because it likes to constructively help out the management teams of its portfolio companies, according to Seeking Alpha.

GS Capital Partners is Goldman’s PE arm. The unit is currently investing out of GS Capital Partners VI, which raised $20 billion in 2007.

Barclays provided financial advice to Interline, while Goldman Sachs advised GS Capital in the deal. P2 apparently did not use an outside investment bank.

Officials for P2 Capital declined comment. Goldman couldn’t be reached for comment.

Photo courtesy of Shutterstock

Separate sales on the secondary market by Blum Capital Partners, Clayton, Dubilier & Rice, Oaktree Capital Management, Sun Capital Partners would generate a total of more than $539.8 million.

In the largest offering of the four, CD&R, which bought a 47 percent stake in Sally Beauty Holdings from the Alberto Culver Co. back in 2006, generated more than $400 million in proceeds when it sold 15 million shares in the beauty supplies company for $26.49 per share (plus a repurchase by the company of 200,000 shares from CD&R), an increase of more than three times from its opening share price $7.35 as a new public company in November of 2006. EBITDA at Sally Beauty increased to $536.4 million for the year ended March 31, up from $259.7 million at the time the private equity firm invested in the company, according to Capital IQ.“It was at a point where we thought we’d transformed the company and the markets were recognizing that,” a source close to CD&R told Buyouts.

Oaktree Capital Management, meantime, generated more than $81.5 million in proceeds when it sold more than 3.6 million shares in Spirit Airlines at $22.51 a share, almost 50 percent higher than its debut offering price of $12 a share in its May 2011 IPO.

Department store chain Gordmans Stores Inc. on May 21 announced that an affiliate of Sun Capital Partners would offer 3 million shares at $16.75 per share in the company it acquired in 2008 and took public in 2010 at $11 a share, which would generate more than $50.2 million in proceeds. The company’s stock was trading as high as $17.57 per share on the afternoon of May 25.

Under Sun Capital, the company lowered freight costs, invested in technology and increased cash flow by improving inventory turnover, Jeff Magny, a vice president with the Boca Raton, Fla.-based firm, told Buyouts.  EBITDA at the company was $46.6 million for the year ended April 28, more than four times the $10.9 million of EBITDA for the year ended Jan. 31, 2009, according to Capital IQ. “From the time we went public to today, we were able to further improve profitability, which makes the stock very attractive,” Magny told Buyouts.

In the smallest offering, Blum Capital Partners sold 831,100 shares in Career Education at a minimum of $6.48 per share, generating proceeds of at least $5.4 million.

An extended version of this story will be published in the June 4 edition of Buyouts.

(CORRECTION: An earlier version of the story said that Gordmans Stores, backed by Sun Capital, had completed its stock offering. This version was changed to reflect that it had only announced the commencement of the offering on May 21.)

Image credit: Shutterstock

Bernard Vaughan is a senior editor at Buyouts Magazine. Follow his tweets @BVaughanReuters. Follow Buyouts tweets @Buyouts.

Bain is preparing to kick off fundraising by the end of June, sending out a private placement memorandum with the final terms of the new fund, Bain Capital Fund XI, the people said. Fund X, the previous fund, was $10.7 billion.

Bain Capital Fund XI will also receive a $600 million commitment from the firm’s fund managers to demonstrate alignment of interest, the sources said. A fundraising close could come as early as the first quarter of 2013, Bain has told investors.

Bain has told investors that a $2 billion co-investment fund will be raised alongside Fund XI and that access as well as terms that investors get on that fund will be tied to the size of their commitment to the core fund, the sources said.

Bain declined to comment.

(Reporting by Greg Roumeliotis in New York; Editing by Gerald E. McCormick)

Image Credit: Shutterstock.com

RIM shares, already down nearly 80 percent over the past 12 months, slumped nearly 13 percent in after-market trading, slithering to around $9.77 a share.

“We’re looking at this as a salvage, value-type situation. The valuable assets in RIM are cash on the balance sheet, the recurring enterprise software revenue, and their patents,” said Mark McKechnie, an analyst at ThinkEquity LLC.

“When I talk about RIM’s valuation, I talk about $10 per share for the value of their patents.”

RIM also said there would be significant headcount reductions in some areas, confirming recent reports of job cuts as RIM tries to reposition itself in a smartphone market where it now trails far behind rivals Apple and Google’s Android.

RIM said it had hired the bankers, from JP Morgan and Royal Bank of Canada, after releasing its year-end results in late March to aid its strategic review.

RIM has asked the banks to evaluate the merits of various strategies, including a business model overhaul or less dramatic moves such as expanding the BlackBerry platform through partnerships and licensing deals.

“These advisors have been tasked to help us with the strategic review we referenced on our year-end financial results conference call and to evaluate the relative merits and feasibility of various financial strategies,” CEO Thorsten Heins said in a statement.

(By Alastair Sharp. Writing by Cameron French; Editing by Janet Guttsman)

Photo: Image courtesy of Shutterstock.

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Shares of Oslo-listed Opera, coveted for its advanced mobile phone software technology, jumped as much as 26 percent, valuing the firm at over $800 million.

Opera’s mobile technology, along with 170 million Opera Mini users, give the firm extensive commercial relationships with mobile phone manufacturers and operators.

Facebook has struggled to convert its rapidly increasing traffic from mobile platforms to revenue, and purchasing Opera would be a faster solution than building its own platform or browser, analysts added.

“Opera would be sensible for Facebook on several levels as it would enhance the now limited mobile experience of Facebook, improve Facebook’s mobile monetization problem, help Facebook retain online game developers leaving the social network over a lacking mobile platform and further improve Facebook’s ability to target ads,” Arctic Securities said.

It would be such a perfect fit for Facebook, analysts said it would have to pay a hefty premium.

DNB, Norway’s top bank, said the price would have to be double Friday’s closing level, or 68.6 crowns, valuing the firm at $1.35 billion, while Danske Bank predicted a price between 50 and 60 crowns a share, or between $1 billion and $1.2 billion.

At 1021 GMT, the stock traded up 16.9 percent at 40.1 crowns a share, valuing the firm at around $800 million.

Opera officials have repeatedly declined to comment.

Still, several obstacles remain.

Opera founder and top shareholder Jon S. Von Tetzchner said the firm should focus on organic growth.
“I want Opera to focus on growth and delivering good results; there are big opportunities for Opera,” Tetzchner, who holds 10.9 percent of Opera told Reuters. “We have been promised 500 million users by 2013 and I think that’s a good goal and the firm should keep going for it.”

“I personally think that an ARPU (average revenue per user) goal of $1 is even modest,” he said. “I am not pushing for a takeover.”

Tetzchner said he was not aware of a bid and had not decided how he would react to one but added it would be “undemocratic” for him to try to block it if others supported it.

Another obstacle could be Google, which has extensive relationships with Opera.

“A takeover by Facebook will likely send cold water down Google’s spine,” Arctic Securities said.

Google is Opera’s default search partner for Opera Mini and Opera Mobile worldwide outside Russia/CIS, making the firm a key relationship for Google.

If the firm continued to grow organically, it would be able to maintain several parallel relationships with firms like Facebook and Google so if one of them wanted full control, the premium would have to be hefty, analysts added.

(By Joachim Dagenborg and Balazs Koranyi; editing by Hans-Juergen Peters and Helen Massy-Beresford)

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There were 373 global announced mergers this week, valued at roughly $60.7 billion. The total is the lowest number of deals so far this year, according to preliminary data from Thomson Reuters. But deal value more than doubled from last week when 574 deals collected $28.5 billion, TR said.

We had some notable transactions this week led by Eaton Corp.’s $11.46 billion deal for Cooper Industries.

The number of private equity-backed deals was also low. According to TR, there were 51 PE-backed deals valued at $8.4 billion. This compares to 80 deals last week that totaled $8.6 billion.

One caveat, though. The number of deals and their value could change (up or down) as Thomson Reuters get more information on transactions. Here’s the week’s top PE deals, according to Thomson Reuters.

Photo of snails courtesy of Shutterstock

[slideshow]

[slide title="5. Tarami Corp"]
Dydo Drino this week announced it would pay 11 billion yen (US$138 million) to buy jelly maker Tarami Corp, according to Bloomberg.

In 2009, Sun Capital Partner sold Tarami, a Japan-based maker of fruit and fruit-flavored gelatin cups, to a private equity subsidiary of Mitsubishi UFJ Lease & Finance Company Ltd.

[slide title="4. Global Blue"]
Silver Lake and Partners Group yesterday agreed to buy Swiss-based tax-free shopping business Global Blue for 1 billion Euros ($1.3 billion) from rival Equistone, Reuters reported.

Nyon, Switzerland-based Global Blue, a duty free shopping group, helps overseas travelers in Europe reclaim sales tax on their shopping.
Equistone, formerly Barclays Private Equity, bought Global Blue in 2007 in a deal valuing the business at 360 million euros.

[slide title="3. Formula One"]

CVC Capital Partners recently sold a $1.6 billion stake in the Formula One racing business to a group of investors, including the investment management firm BlackRock. After the sale, CVC owns about 42 percent of Formula One.

The sale is an attempt by CVC to reduce its risk before Formula One goes public, the New York Times said.

[slide title="2. Motel 6"]

This week, Accor agreed to sell its troubled U.S. budget hotel business to the Blackstone Group for $1.9 billion.

The sale includes Accor’s Motel 6 and Studio 6 chains and comprises 1,102 hotels in Canada and the United States.

[slide title="1. AMC Entertainment"]

The week’s biggest deal comes from China.

Dalian Wanda Group, a Chinese conglomerate, has agreed to buy movie chain AMC Entertainment for $2.6 billion, including debt, Reuters said. AMC is owned by an investment group that includes Bain Capital, CCMP Capital Advisors and Spectrum Equity Capital.

[/slideshow]