Ropes, Kirkland Advise as Berkshire Buys Majority Stake in AHEAD

Ropes & Gray advised Berkshire Partners in its acquisition of a majority stake in AHEAD, a Chicago-headquartered provider of enterprise cloud services, from Centerbridge Partners.

Kirkland & Ellis counseled AHEAD and Centerbridge on the transaction, for which no financial details were disclosed, according to a statement.

AHEAD says it builds platforms for digital business, combining advances in cloud infrastructure, intelligent operation, and modern applications.

Centerbridge acquired a majority stake in the company and Berkshire Partners bought a minority stake in a September 2020 transaction with the company’s then-owner Court Square Capital Partners. Since then, Centerbridge and Berkshire have worked with the company’s leadership team to increase AHEAD’s focus on an enterprise account base and to make multiple acquisitions.

Berkshire Partners said that as new majority shareholder, it will continue to fuel AHEAD’s expansion. The AHEAD management team and its employees, led by founder and CEO Daniel Adamany, will continue to own a “significant” portion of the business, and Centerbridge will retain a minority stake, the statement said.

Ropes said its team advising Berkshire Partners was led by private equity partner Christian Westra and associate Brandon Winer, and private equity partner Taylor Hart.

Kirkland said its team was led by M&A partners Corey Fox, Dan Hoppe, and Sam Stucker and debt finance partners Judson Oswald and Omar Raddawi.