JLL Expands Education Platform

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Target: MedVance Institute

Price: Undisclosed

Sponsor: JLL Partners

Seller: Generation Partners

Financial Adviser: Seller: BMO Capital Markets, Powers Pyles Sutter & Verville PC

Legal Adviser: Seller: Greenberg Traurig LLP, Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom LLP

JLL Partners has agreed to buy MedVance Institute, a Cookeville, Tenn.-based school for medical professionals, from Generation Partners,

MedVance offers a variety of programs designed to help people get jobs in fields such as nursing, medical billing, personal training and surgical technology. The school has 10 locations in Tennessee, Florida, Louisiana, and Texas.

The New York-based shop is folding MedVance into Education Affiliates Inc., JLL Partners’s post-secondary education platform. The firm launched the company in 2004 and MedVance will mark the 10th add-on acquisition. With MedVance, Baltimore-based Education Affiliates will operate 50 schools. The deal is expected to close later this month.

Frank Rodriquez, a partner at JLL Partners, told Buyouts that the firm is not planning to exit the five-year-old investment any time soon, and hinted that the company’s acquisition spree may continue. “MedVance is another step on the path of building a very nice business,” he said.

Generation Partners, a Greenwich, Conn.-based firm that sponsors mid-market buyouts and growth equity transactions, invested $11.5 million in MedVance in December 2003, according to CapitalIQ. Louis Marino, a vice president of the firm, did not return phone calls.

General Electric and BMO Capital Markets recently launched a $110 million credit facility to help Education Affiliates complete the buyout, according to Bank Loan Report. The credit facility reportedly consists of a $90 million term loan and a $20 million revolver, with pricing at Libor plus 550 bps and a 2.5 percent Libor floor.

Education Affiliates is a portfolio company in JLL Partners’s third fund, a $750 million pool that closed in 2003 and is almost entirely invested, Rodriguez said. The firm is currently investing from its sixth fund.

JLL Partners’s most recent platform acquisition came in March, when it bought PharmaNet Development Group, a Princeton, N.J.-based company that conducts drug trials, for $100 million in cash, according to CapitalIQ. Founded in 1988, the firm invests in restructurings, turnarounds, buyouts, growth capital plays and industry consolidations.