OTPP Building New Careers?

Rishika Sadam of Reuters reports, Apollo Global-led investor group to buy CareerBuilder:

A group of investors led by U.S. private equity firm Apollo Global Management LLC (APO) and Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan Board will buy a majority stake in job portal CareerBuilder, the companies said on Monday.

CareerBuilder LLC is owned by Tribune Media Co (TRCO), TV station operator Tegna Inc (TGNA) and newspaper group McClatchy Co (MNI). These current owners will all retain a minority stake, Apollo said.

Apollo did not disclose financial details of the deal.

Reuters reported last month that Apollo was negotiating a deal that would value CareerBuilder at more than $500 million, including debt.

OTPP put out a press release, Apollo Global Management-affiliated Funds and Ontario Teachers’ Agree to Acquire a Controlling Interest in CareerBuilder:

Certain affiliates of investment funds managed by affiliates of Apollo Global Management, LLC (together with its consolidated subsidiaries, "Apollo") (NYSE: APO), the Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan Board ("Ontario Teachers'") and CareerBuilder, LLC ("CareerBuilder") announced today that they have entered into a definitive agreement, pursuant to which an investor group led by Apollo along with Ontario Teachers' will acquire a majority of the outstanding equity interests in CareerBuilder. CareerBuilder's current owners, TEGNA Inc. ("Tegna"), Tribune National Marketing Company, LLC ("Tribune") and McClatchy Interactive West ("McClatchy") will retain a minority interest.

"CareerBuilder is a global leader in human capital solutions, and we are excited to work with the Company in the next phase of its growth and development," said David Sambur, Senior Partner at Apollo. "Matt Ferguson and his team have done an exceptional job capitalizing on CareerBuilder's iconic brand to create an integrated solutions software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform, and we look forward to working with the team to support the Company's continued growth and innovation."

Matt Ferguson, CEO of CareerBuilder, added, "This is an exciting next chapter for CareerBuilder. We are very proud of the work we did during our partnership with Tegna, Tribune and McClatchy, and we look forward to collaborating with Apollo and Ontario Teachers' to continue the successful transformation of our business."

The transaction includes committed financing from Credit Suisse, Barclays, Deutsche Bank, Citigroup Global Markets and Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC; all are also acting as financial advisors to Apollo, along with LionTree Advisors and PJT Partners. Morgan Stanley & Co. is acting as financial advisor to CareerBuilder. Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP and Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP are acting as legal advisors to Apollo. Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz LLP is acting as legal advisor to the sellers.

The proposed transaction is expected to close in the third quarter of 2017, subject to regulatory approvals and customary closing conditions. Apollo's investment is being made by the Apollo-managed Special Situations I fund.

About CareerBuilder

CareerBuilder is a global, end-to-end human capital solutions company focused on helping employers find, hire and manage great talent. Combining advertising, software and services, CareerBuilder leads the industry in recruiting solutions, employment screening and human capital management. It also operates top job sites around the world. CareerBuilder and its subsidiaries operate in the United States, Europe, South America, Canada and Asia. For more information, visit www.careerbuilder.com.

About Apollo

Apollo is a leading global alternative investment manager with offices in New York, Los Angeles, Houston, Chicago, St. Louis, Bethesda, Toronto, London, Frankfurt, Madrid, Luxembourg, Mumbai, Delhi, Singapore, Hong Kong and Shanghai. Apollo had assets under management of approximately $197 billion as of March 31, 2017 in private equity, credit and real estate funds invested across a core group of nine industries where Apollo has considerable knowledge and resources. For more information about Apollo, please visit www.agm.com.

About Ontario Teachers'

The Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan (Ontario Teachers') is Canada's largest single-profession pension plan, with C$175.6 billion in net assets at December 31, 2016.  It holds a diverse global portfolio of assets, approximately 80% of which is managed in-house, and has earned an average annualized rate of return of 10.1% since the plan's founding in 1990. Ontario Teachers' is an independent organization headquartered in Toronto. Its Asia-Pacific region office is located in Hong Kong and its Europe, Middle East & Africa region office is in London. The defined-benefit plan, which is fully funded, invests and administers the pensions of the province of Ontario's 318,000 active and retired teachers. For more information, visit otpp.com and follow us on Twitter @OtppInfo.

In other related news, Cision PR Newswire reports, CareerBuilder Teams Up with Google to Help Connect More Americans with Jobs:

CareerBuilder's evolution into an end-to-end human capital solutions company began with operating leading job boards around the world – something it has done for more than two decades. Today, CareerBuilder is excited to announce a powerful collaboration that will bring even more visibility to its clients' job listings and help job seekers find those opportunities faster.

CareerBuilder is joining forces with Google to help power a new feature in Search that aggregates millions of jobs from job boards, career sites, social networks and other sources. CareerBuilder is fully integrated with Google to feed content to them, and will include all of its jobs from its job sites and talent networks in this new feature.

"CareerBuilder has been working closely with Google on this from the very beginning when Google was first reaching out to content providers," said Matt Ferguson, CEO of CareerBuilder. "We saw a big opportunity to increase exposure for our clients' jobs and today we stand as one of Google's biggest suppliers of jobs content. Google has enormous reach and excellent search capabilities, so why not leverage these strengths for the benefit of our clients?"

Over the last 20-plus years, CareerBuilder's model has always been to serve up jobs wherever job seekers are on the Internet, and today CareerBuilder's job search engine is on more than 1,000 sites. CareerBuilder is embracing this new feature as another distribution channel for its clients that will capture even more potential candidates.

CareerBuilder has been working with Google on different initiatives and is exploring ways in which the two companies can further collaborate.

"CareerBuilder has always had an open ecosystem because it speeds innovation and produces better outcomes," Ferguson said. "Our product portfolio has expanded so significantly – now covering everything from recruiting and employment screening to managing current employees. We think there is a great opportunity to work with Google as we grow our business."

Google has been a traffic source for CareerBuilder for several years. Six months ago, CareerBuilder announced plans to use the Google Cloud Jobs API to power searches on its job site. CareerBuilder is pairing its deep knowledge in recruitment with Google's expertise in machine learning to provide faster, more relevant results for workers looking for jobs on CareerBuilder.com. See the announcement here.

I don't have much to add on this deal. I'm pretty sure the folks at Apollo know how to unlock the value in CareerBuilder. Moreover, if the company is working with Google to improve its products and services, that is a huge vote of confidence in my book.

Of course, if you ask me, Microsoft's acquisition of LinkedIn will change the job search industry in ways we don't even know yet, and this represents a major threat to traditional job search companies.

How traditional job search companies respond to this emerging threat remains to be seen. Will Google try to compete head on with Microsoft and potentially acquire CareerBuilder in the future? It certainly wouldn't surprise me given the two companies are working closely together.

Below, a short clip from CareerBuilder's YouTube channel on the top jobs in America today. What about the defined-benefit industry? Oh yeah, it's shrinking, much to my dismay!