Kirkland & Ellis and Ropes & Gray took the lead on Bain Capital’s $5.6 billion acquisition of cloud-based education software company PowerSchool Holdings, Inc.
Kirkland advised PowerSchool on the deal, announced Friday, while Ropes & Gray guided its longtime client Bain in the transaction. Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, led by M&A partners Damien Zoubek and Sanjay Murti served as legal advisor to the special committee of the PowerSchool board of directors.
The buyout makes PowerSchool, whose customers are some of the largest school districts in the US, the latest private equity-backed tech company to go private. It also is being financed by a group of private credit lenders, including Ares Management, HPS Investment Partners and Blackstone, amid a surge in the private credit market that has made Big Law firms take notice.
The deal is expected to close in the second half of 2024.
Kirkland has long represented PowerSchool, previously advising the company on a 2021 Up-C IPO, which valued the education technology company at $3.5 billion. Kirkland also advised PowerSchool on a series of acquisitions over the years, including its acquisition of Hoonuit, a leading K-12 data management and analytics company, in 2020.
Kirkland corporate partners David Klein, Andrew Norwich and Daniel Wolf led the team on its sale to Bain. Kirkland’s Ari Levi and Stuart Casillas also advised on the deal.
Other team members include executive compensation partners Rohit Nafday and Anthony Ji; tax partners Heidi Yuen and David Kung; antitrust & compensation partners Marin and Jack Coles; debt finance partners Sonali Jindal and Douglas Tedeschi; government contracts partner Boyd Greene; and capital markets partner Robert Goedert also worked on the deal.
Ropes & Gray’s team included private equity partners Charlie Boer, David Hutchins and Jessica Cooney, along with M&A partners Thomas Holden and Thomas Fraser. IP transactions partner Erica Han, finance partners Byung Choi and Scott Rolnik, tax partner Pam Glazier, and executive compensation partner Renata Ferrari also advised on the deal.
Ropes litigation partners Martin Crisp, Dan McCaughey, Peter Welsh and Nick Berg, were part of the team, along with antitrust partner Jonathan Klarfeld and regulatory partners Ama Adams and Ruchit Patel. Data, privacy & cybersecurity partner Ed McNicholas, employee partner Megan Bisk and ESG partner Michael Littenberg also worked on the deal.
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