[boead]

Bain Capital bought D&M Holdings (Denon and Marantz) for a reported 441 million dollars. Earlier this year, the company bought Allen & Heath, and had purchased Boston Acoustics in a separate transaction. Bain plans to make D&M a private company. It is currently listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange and another Japanese audio company, Kenwood Corporation, may partner with Bain on the purchase. Best Buy and Merrill Lynch Global Private Equity also eyed purchasing D&M, but dropped out after the first round of bids were submitted. And for the record, in case you forgot, Bain Capitol, whose Founder is former candidate Mitt Romney, is the majority owner of Guitar Center.

[TheChairGuy]

Bain Capital bought D&M Holdings (Denon and Marantz) for a reported 441 million dollars. Earlier this year, the company bought Allen & Heath, and had purchased Boston Acoustics in a separate transaction. Bain plans to make D&M a private company. It is currently listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange and another Japanese audio company, Kenwood Corporation, may partner with Bain on the purchase. Best Buy and Merrill Lynch Global Private Equity also eyed purchasing D&M, but dropped out after the first round of bids were submitted. And for the record, in case you forgot, Bain Capitol, whose Founder is former candidate Mitt Romney, is the majority owner of Guitar Center.

I didn't know a lot of this (except for Mitt Romney with Bain Capital)...neato, thanks.

Slightly aside, Best Buy, with ever lower CD/DVD sales, is carving up space in all stores and putting in...musical instruments (real ones, amplified mostly).  They'll be a pretty heady competitor to Guitar Center (and their online sister, Musicians Friend) to be certain.

John

[boead]

Yup and recently Best Buy officially announced it is entering the MI retail game as it is rolling out 85 music stores-within stores, named Best Buy For Music, this year. That would make Best Buy the second-largest MI retailer in terms of retail locations. Each store-within-a store will be about 2,500 square feet with more than 1,000 products housed in each. Individual and group guitar lessons will be offered. Fender, Gibson, and Roland are among those who will have their products displayed in the stores.

[mfsoa]

Doesn't D+M also own Mcitosh?

[dyohn]

Doesn't D+M also own Mcitosh?

Yep.  Denon, Marantz, McIntosh, Snell, Boston Acoustics, Escient, Allen and Heath, D&M Professional and Calrec.  This purchase will if approved make Bain a very big player in the audio industry.

[boead]

Doesn't D+M also own Mcitosh?

Yes they do. and Harman Music Group owns Harman Kardon, JBL, Infinity, Becker, Soundcraft, AMEK BSS, C-Audio, AKG, Digitech, DOD, dbx and Studer.

[Doublej]

Bose does $2 billion a year in sales, Harman International does $3.5 billion a years in sales, Apple sold 21 million ipods making it well over a $1 billion in sales. I am sure Yamaha, Sony, and Panasonic and many more are about $1 billion in annual sales.

D&M did less than a billion in sales and as best I can tell was sold for less than 1x revenue. As much as one may like to think they are a big player if they went out of business hardly anyone would notice.

Doesn't D+M also own Mcitosh?

Yep.  Denon, Marantz, McIntosh, Snell, Boston Acoustics, Escient, Allen and Heath, D&M Professional and Calrec.  This purchase will if approved make Bain a very big player in the audio industry.