Private Equity News & Analysis

Cinven and Warburg fully exit Ziggo

The sale of Dutch cable operator Ziggo has generated €1.7bn in total proceeds for each of the firms representing a 2.8x return for Cinven and more than 4x return for Warburg.

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Cinven and Warburg Pincus have sold their remaining stake in Euronext-listed Dutch cable operator Ziggo, bringing the total proceeds for their divestment to €1.7 billion for each firm. 

With the sale of 34 million shares at a share price of €25.75, which represented the pair’s remaining 17 percent stake, Warburg and Cinven have now fully exited the company. It is unclear who bought the stake. 

The total divestment of Ziggo generated a 2.8x return for Cinven and a return of more than 4x for Warburg. The gross proceeds from Friday’s divestment for both firms were €329 million. 

The pair had offloaded shares on three earlier occasions, after Ziggo raised €804 million in an initial public offering last March, which was the biggest IPO in Europe since July 2011.

Warburg and Cinven established Ziggo in 2006 as a result of a consolidation process in the Dutch cable market. In December 2005, Warburg Pincus bought Multikabel. A year later, Kabelcom and Casema also came up for sale. Cinven teamed up with Warburg and merged the three businesses to create Ziggo, which has close to 3 million customers. 

Last year, Private Equity International covered the deal extensively in its Deal Mechanic column.