{"id":15271,"date":"2023-04-19T00:02:03","date_gmt":"2023-04-19T00:02:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/foxs-787-5-million-settlement\/"},"modified":"2023-04-19T00:03:09","modified_gmt":"2023-04-19T00:03:09","slug":"foxs-787-5-million-settlement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/foxs-787-5-million-settlement\/","title":{"rendered":"Fox’s $787.5 million settlement is big win for buyout firm Staple Street"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Svea Herbst-Bayliss<\/p>\n

(Reuters) – Staple Street Capital Group LLC, the small buyout firm that owns Dominion Voting Systems, has scored a $787.5 million windfall after Fox Corp settled a defamation lawsuit brought by the voting machine operator.<\/p>\n

The amount is equivalent to 20 times the $38.3 million the New York-based private equity firm paid in 2018 to acquire a 76.2% stake in Dominion. Staple Street has $900 million in assets under management, according to its website.<\/p>\n

The $787.5 million Dominion will receive from Fox in the settlement, which also comes with an acknowledgement of a court ruling from its cable channel Fox News that it aired false claims about Dominion machines facilitating fraud in the 2020 U.S. election, is about half the $1.6 billion in damages it was seeking in its lawsuit. <\/p>\n

Dominion and Staple Street representatives did not respond to requests for comment on how much Dominion stands to receive after legal expenses and taxes. <\/p>\n

Even before Tuesday’s settlement, Staple Street’s investment in Dominion had been successful. Fox said in a court filing that Dominion was valued at around $226 million in the run-up to the 2020 election, citing exhibits it did not make public. That was up from the $80 million valuation when the acquisition of Dominion was clinched in 2018. <\/p>\n

Investors in the $265 million private equity fund that Staple Street was using for investments when it acquired Dominion include the University of Arizona’s endowment, Travelers Insurance and fund-of-funds manager Hauser Private Equity, according to data provider Pitchbook.<\/p>\n

Mark Hauser, managing partner of Hauser Private Equity, welcomed the settlement news. <\/p>\n

“We are very pleased with the outcome and think that Staple Street has handled the situation very well on behalf of their investors. We\u2019ve had a relationship with Staple Street since 2014 and think highly of their management team,” he said.<\/p>\n

Founded in 2009 by Stephen Owens, a former Carlyle Group Inc dealmaker, and Hootan Yaghoobzadeh, a Cerberus Capital Management veteran, Staples Street invests in companies in a range of sectors, including financial services, healthcare and chemicals.<\/p>\n

Yaghoobzadeh told reporters on Tuesday that Staple Street backed Dominion in its mission to shoot down lies against it.<\/p>\n

“We are proud to have played whatever part we could in helping Dominion achieve these important goals,” he said.<\/p>\n

Staple Street’s previous investments include theme park operator Six Flags Entertainment Corp and information technology services provider Cyberlink ASP Technology Inc, according to its website. <\/p>\n

In one of the court filings, Fox cited a December 2020 text from a former Staple Street employee to a current executive that proved prescient.<\/p>\n

“Would be pretty unreal if you guys like 20x’ed your Dominion investment with these lawsuits,” the text read.<\/p>\n

\n

(Reporting by Svea Herbst-Bayliss in Rhode Island; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)<\/p>\n

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By Svea Herbst-Bayliss (Reuters) – Staple Street Capital Group LLC, the small buyout firm that owns Dominion Voting Systems, has scored a $787.5 million windfall after Fox Corp settled a defamation lawsuit brought by the voting machine operator. The amount is equivalent to 20 times the $38.3 million the New York-based private equity firm paid […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":15272,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1213],"tags":[1223],"class_list":["post-15271","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-u-s-business","tag-updated"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-content\/uploads\/Reuters_Direct_Media\/USOnlineReportBusinessNews\/tagreuters.com2023binary_LYNXMPEJ3H0XK-VIEWIMAGE.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15271","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15271"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15271\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15391,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15271\/revisions\/15391"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15272"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15271"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15271"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15271"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}