<![CDATA[ Latest from Next TV in Liontree ]]> https://www.nexttv.com/tag/liontree Mon, 07 Dec 2020 11:00:14 +0000 en <![CDATA[ Aryeh Bourkoff ]]> https://www.nexttv.com/features/aryeh-bourkoff mUvr9CkBYNSxvtkmv4DUKG Mon, 07 Dec 2020 11:00:14 +0000 Mon, 07 Dec 2020 11:34:03 +0000

Anyone who has been in the cable business over the past 20 years is well aware of Bourkoff. Before founding LionTree in 2012, Bourkoff was one of the top cable analysts in the country, and the only one in the sector covering both the equity and debt sides of the business. Along with other previous positions within UBS, Bourkoff served as vice chairman and head of Americas Investment Banking at UBS and served on the UBS Investment Banking Executive Committee. Before joining UBS, he was a high-yield research analyst at CIBC World Markets from 1997–99 and Smith Barney from 1995–97, where Institutional Investor ranked him the number one ranked cable and satellite analyst for seven consecutive years.

LionTree has offices in New York, San Francisco, Paris and London, and Bourkoff and his team have been strongly influential in the deal market. According to a 2017 New York Times profile, Bourkoff first pitched the idea of using his investment in Charter Communications to roll up the cable business to Liberty Media chairman John Malone on Malone’s private jet.  The result was Charter’s $80 billion purchase of Time Warner Cable.

The next decade will be the stage for a clash of the titans..."

Aryeh Bourkoff

Since its founding, LionTree has had a hand in more than $500 billion in transactions, including Liberty’s purchase of Virgin Media in 2013 and the sale of its German and Eastern European assets to Vodafone in 2019 for $20 billion. More recently, LionTree advised Viacom in its $20 billion merger with CBS, Virgin Media founder Richard Branson’s satellite venture Virgin Orbit and TiVo in its $3 billion merger with Xperi.  

In his 2019 end-of-year letter to employees, Bourkoff said the focus for 2020 would be on whether scale players can move from the disruption of 2019, take an offensive posture and continue to innovate.

“The answer, of course, is that they must,” Bourkoff wrote. “The next decade will be the stage for a clash of titans, as battle-tested platforms that have emerged stronger than ever will compete against one another for consumers’ attention. As advisers first and foremost, we must be cognizant of the fact that each scaled player’s ‘motion’ will be different.”

]]> <![CDATA[ LionTree, Searchlight Launch Partnership ]]> https://www.nexttv.com/news/liontree-searchlight-launch-partnership-417442 rwGvXtJGTxLetxuDgQcZRs Thu, 11 Jan 2018 16:00:00 +0000

Boutique investment bank LionTree, headed by founder and CEO Aryeh Bourkoff, one of the chief financial engineers behind Charter Communications’ purchase of Time Warner Cable, has formed a new investment venture with former Charter chairman Eric Zinterhofer’s Searchlight Capital Partners aimed at investing in growth companies in the telecom, media and telecommunications  (TMT) sector.

LightTree Capital Partners will provide an alternative to traditional venture capital and bank financings for TMT companies through less-dilutive investment structures, the company said in a statement. LionTree and Searchlight will make investments across a range of subsectors within TMT, with a focus on growth companies that have talented management teams, strong track records of performance and a clear vision for disrupting or creating large market opportunities.

“LightTree is a natural evolution of LionTree’s core capabilities that will provide our clients in the TMT space with more tailored funding solutions than offered by typical debt and equity providers,” Bourkoff said in a statement. “Too many of our high growth clients find existing capital raising options unappealing: they don’t want to raise debt while they are rapidly growing, nor do they want to raise another dilutive equity round or go public pre-maturely. Our Fortune 100 TMT clients have access to a broad range of funding solutions that straddle debt and equity. We and Searchlight will bring these same tools to our high growth TMT clients, but with a highly nuanced, industry-informed approach. Our goal is to connect our clients with the right capital and expertise to seize on their business opportunity, while maintaining maximum upside for founders and shareholders. We are excited to forge this new relationship with Searchlight, a firm we have long admired for their commitment to investors and stewardship of companies.”

Bourkoff started LionTree in 2012 after serving as vice chairman and head of investment banking, Americas at UBS. He was one of the chief architects of Charter’s purchase of Time Warner Cable, and his firm has been in on most of the big cable deals of the past several years. Since its founding in 2012, LionTree has advised on over 85 transactions representing an aggregate value of more than $300 billion. 

Zinterhofer, a former partner at Apollo Management, was Charter chairman from 2009 to 2016. He formed Searchlight Capital in 2010 with former KKR partner Oliver Haarmann and former Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan head of private equity Erol Uzmeri and remains as lead independent director at Charter.

“Since its formation, Searchlight has provided flexible capital and strategic support to businesses in complex situations in various stages of their life cycle,” Zinterhofer said in a statement. “Our firm has a particularly strong track record in the media and telecom sectors. We are focused on applying these skills to companies in rapidly evolving TMT sectors, where existing capital solutions often lack the creativity and versatility of the underlying businesses. In partnering with LionTree, we gain a partner with deep client relationships and expertise evaluating emerging business models and trends in TMT, as well as a trusted collaborator. We are confident that by bringing together Searchlight’s and LionTree’s collective expertise, we will create value-additive outcomes for all parties.”

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