After selling off $1.75bn (£970m) in assets to Barclays, bankrupt giant Lehman Brothers is to sell much of its money management business to Bain Capital and Hellman & Friedman for about $2.15bn (£1.19bn) in cash, reports The American Lawyer.
The sale of Lehman's asset management unit, Neuberger Berman, is among the biggest outstanding issues for Lehman. Weil Gotshal & Manges, Lehman's bankruptcy counsel, is handling the deal on Lehman's end.
A twelve-partner team from Boston-based firm Ropes & Gray advised longstanding client Bain on the acquisition.
The team includes M&A partners Alfred Rose, Newcomb Stillwell and William Shields, bankruptcy partners Mark Bane and Steven Hoort, tax partner Christopher Leich, executive compensation and benefits partners Jonathan Zorn and Peter Ebb, investment management and regulatory partners Gregory Sheehan, Dwight Quayle and Gregory Davis, and intellectual property partner Edward Black.
Ropes has represented Bain in several recent deals, including its $11bn (£6.1bn) acquisition - as part of a consortium of firms - of data systems company SunGard in 2005.
Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton is advising Hellman on the deal, with New York-based partners Chris Austin and Dan Sternberg leading the team. Hellman is a longtime Cleary client. The firm advised the private equity fund on at least three major deals last year, including its purchase of a minority stake in Grosvenor Capital Management, a manager of funds of hedge funds with $24bn (£13.3bn) in assets.
It is unclear how much Lehman might draw for its investment-management unit, which includes the Neuberger-Berman fund-management business. Experts valued the unit at $7bn (£3.9bn) before Lehman's bankruptcy filing, but it has been reported that Bain and Hellman made separate bids worth about $4bn (£2.2bn) each last week before deciding to team up.
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