Greenhill Announces Sale of Portion of Principal Investments for $45M

Greenhill & Co., Inc. GHL announced today that it has completed the sale of substantially all of its interests in Greenhill Capital Partners II, L.P. and its affiliated funds to certain investors advised by J.P. Morgan Asset Management and certain principals of GCP Capital Partners, for an aggregate purchase price of approximately $45 million. The firm continues to own interests in several other funds that were previously affiliated with it, as well as a substantial equity interest in Iridium Communications, Inc. IRDM. "We are pleased to have had the opportunity to realize immediate value from a significant portion of our principal investment portfolio through the sale of substantially all of our investment in a private equity fund we sponsored, rather than wait for the liquidation of the fund's portfolio companies over a period of years," said Scott L. Bok, Chief Executive Officer of Greenhill. "This transaction accelerates the realization of cash proceeds, but has essentially no income statement impact given that the sale price is consistent with the carrying value of the asset on our most recent balance sheet. We have been consistently clear that, following the separation last year of our historic merchant banking business in order to focus entirely on client advisory work, our residual principal investments are noncore assets, the value of which we will seek to maximize and realize over time. While it will likely take some years to realize the full value of our principal investments, where attractive opportunities arise to accelerate the liquidation of such assets at what we believe are attractive valuations we will pursue them. As we have also been consistently clear, as cash proceeds are realized from our principal investments we expect to return a significant portion of that value to shareholders through dividends and share repurchases."