As we kick off 2014, we wanted to update you on our activity for 2013.  In addition to another record year of transactions, we were happy to celebrate Fairmount’s ten year anniversary.  Despite a decade that included the weakest economy in almost a century, we are pleased to report that Fairmount continued to grow our business throughout the downturn.  It has been our pleasure to build relationships with so many of you over the past decade and complete well over 100 transactions for aggregate consideration of many billions of Dollars, Euros, Pounds and other currencies.  We look forward to continuing  to serve the middle market companies of our region and beyond in years to come.  We gave ourselves a birthday present a few month back – we retired our old monochromatic web site, and introduced our brand new website, featuring bold new graphics – click here  to take a look, or click on the links to the right.

Here are the Fairmount Partners highlights for 2013.

Partner Honored as Middle Market Thought Leader of the Year

The Alliance of Merger & Acquisition Advisors ® (AMAA) selected our partner Andy Greenberg as the “Middle Market Thought Leader of the Year.”  This honor is bestowed upon individuals who have made a substantial contribution to the merger & acquisition profession through publication of works that promote research and higher standards of excellence.  Andy earned this award for his work in creating, founding and growing GF Data, the leading source of merger and acquisition data for  private middle market transactions.  Please join us in congratulating Andy for a job well done (and for providing critical data that helps us perform better work for our clients.)  For more details,

click here.

Charles Robins Selected as Vice Chairman of Ben Franklin Tech Partners

The Board of Directors of Ben Franklin Technology Partners elected our partner Charles Robins as its Vice Chairman.  BFTP, an initiative of the Pennsylvania state legislature, is a national, award-winning organization for stimulating entrepreneurial potential through entrepreneurship, technology and innovation. Ben Franklin has invested more than $165 million to grow more than 1,750 regional enterprises, across all areas of technology.  It has also launched university/industry partnerships that accelerate scientific discoveries to commercialization.  Charles has been a dedicated advocate for technology businesses in the region – serving as a the lead judge for the Greater Philadelphia Alliance for Capital and Technology (PACT) Enterprise Awards, advising dozens of the leading technology businesses in the region, and even starting two successful software businesses.  For more details, click here.

Completed Deals

During 2013, we helped our clients to successfully complete a total of 13 transactions.  All of our completed and working projects are in our four areas of expertise:

• Business & IT Services
• Industrial & Consumer
• Healthcare
• Technology

Assignments included assisting clients in selling their companies; acquiring other businesses; and raising money through investors and lenders to finance growth or achieve liquidity.

We worked on several significant transactions in the Mid-Atlantic region, but because of our international network in our fields of expertise, we completed deals with companies in the United Kingdom, Germany, Ireland, and Israel, as well as the US. Nearly all of our completed 2013 projects came through referrals from former clients, attorneys, accountants, and other friends, and we thank all of you for your support.

Summaries of a number of our 2013 deals can be found below, with additional details on our website .  We have also included our first deal closed in 2014:  the sale of Big Data analytics platform provider Agilis.

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Headquartered in Maryland, Agilis International, Inc., is a leading provider of predictive data analytics and reconciliation solutions focused primarily in the telecom and media sector. Infogix, Inc. is a leading provider of solutions that enable customers to control, analyze and improve their data integrity and compliance efforts. Infogix is a portfolio company of H.I.G. Capital, a leading global private equity investment firm with more than $13.0 billion of equity capital under management.

Headquartered in New Jersey, Hagelin Flavor Technologies is engaged in the development, production and marketing of flavors and unique flavor technologies for the food industry, with an emphasis on the growing sector of beverage flavors.  Headquartered in Israel, Frutarom Industries Ltd. is a global company operating in the global flavor and fine ingredients markets.

Fairmount Partners served as financial advisor to Hagelin in their acquisition by Frutarom Industries Ltd. for a cash consideration of $52.4 million.

CRI Lifetree is a specialized research organization focused on the conduct and design of early stage, patient population studies headquartered in Mount Laurel, NJ. CRI Lifetree was owned by management and private equity firms SV Life Sciences, based in Boston and London, and the Wellesley, MA based Ampersand Ventures.  One of the world’s largest CROs, PRA is a leading clinical research organization headquartered in Raleigh, NC with offices around the world. PRA is a portfolio company of investment giant KKR (NYSE:KKR), a leading global investment firm.

Fairmount Partners represented CRI Lifetree in their sale to PRA/KKR.

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Audubon, PA headquartered CFS Clinical is the industry leader in processing clinical trial payments and is a portfolio company of Archbrook Capital Management LLC (Archbrook), a private equity firm based in Philadelphia and New York.  Based in London with operations in Princeton, NJ, DrugDev is an interactive network and data sharing platform for over 80,000 clinical trial doctors in 93 countries.

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Fairmount Partners advised Synteract in completing its acquisition of Harrison Clinical Research (HCR), based in Munich, Germany, to form a new multinational CRO – SynteractHCR. The merger makes SynteractHCR a top tier, global CRO and provides additional resources and scale to support large international clinical research programs.  Founded in 1987, Harrison was the 3rd largest independent CRO based in Europe. Harrison was an international company, with operations in 15 countries in Western and Eastern Europe, as well as Israel, South America, and the US.