Video game developer Electronic Arts has agreed to be sold to a group of private investors in a $55 billion deal, making it the largest leveraged buyout ever.
Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund, Jared Kushner's Affinity Partners and private equity firm Silver Lake have teamed up to buy the maker of popular video games like Battlefield and Madden NFL.
They are financing the acquisition with a combination of $36 billion in equity already held by PIF, as well as $20 billion in debt financed by JPMorgan, the company said Monday.
We recall that Affinity Partners is the fund of Donald Trump's son-in-law that will purchase the island of Sazan to build a luxury resort there worth about 1.4 billion euros, or almost 1/40th of the purchase value of "Electronic Arts".
The deal also marks a watershed moment in the LBO market, although some of the largest such acquisitions in the past have ended disastrously.
A leveraged buyout (LBO) is the purchase of a company primarily with borrowed money, using the target company's assets as collateral for the loans.