MINNEAPOLIS--August 2014–In a public court filing in Boston today it was disclosed that The Blackstone Group L.P., Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co., L.P. and TPG Capital L.P. have agreed to pay a total $325 million in settlement of Robins, Kaplan, Miller & Ciresi’s class of plaintiff shareholders in Dahl v. Bain Capital Partners. This settlement is in addition to prior settlements reached with Bain Capital, Goldman Sachs and Silver Lake Technology Management L.L.C. for a total of $150.5 million. The settlements achieved against six of the seven defendant private equity firms now total $475.5 million.
Plaintiffs are former shareholders of certain public companies who sold their shares to the defendant private equity firms in large leveraged buyouts ("LBOs") announced between 2003 and 2007. In 2007, the defendants, all major U.S. private equity firms, were charged in the U.S. District Court, District of Massachusetts, with a market allocation and bid-rigging conspiracy that violates Section 1 of the Sherman Act, 15 U.S.C. § 1. Plaintiffs sought damages as a result of the defendants’ alleged collusion to not bid against each other on deals to drive down the prices of many takeovers of publicly traded companies. The remaining defendant for trial, scheduled for November 2014, is The Carlyle Group LLC, which, under U.S. antitrust laws, remains fully liable for all damages suffered by the Plaintiff class.
The Dahl case has been led by K. Craig Wildfang, co-chair of the Antitrust & Trade Regulation practice at the firm, along with firm partners Thomas Undlin and Stacey Slaughter. The firm’s Antitrust & Trade Regulation Practice was selected this year by Chambers USA as one of the leading antitrust practices in the country. The law firms of Scott + Scott and Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd also serve as co-lead counsel for the plaintiff class in Dahl.
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