If you’ve ever bought a copy of The New York Times, a doughnut and a read-it-in-an-hour paperback from airport concessionaires, chances are that you were buying from The Paradies Shops Inc., a 50-year-old Atlanta-based business.
Now, with the help of its lawyers at Paul, Hastings, Janofsky & Walker and Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough, Paradies—which has more than 500 stores in airports and hotels in the U.S. and Canada—has entered into an agreement to receive a significant investment and form a new partnership with private equity firm Freeman Spogli & Co.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but Paul Hastings partner Walter E. Jospin said his client’s ability "to obtain an investment from one of the leading private equity shops in the country reflects that the private equity business is vibrant, but they’re looking for quality.”
Karen K. Leach, a partner at Nelson Mullins, said Paradies was attracted by Freeman Spogli’s history of working with family-owned businesses.
Jospin, who has represented Paradies since 1997, and Leach, who spent almost a decade representing the company with Jospin, reunited to handle this deal. Leach left Paul Hastings in April, and said she’d handled some restructuring work in past years for Paradies—which she said had more than 50 legal entities and a complex organizational structure—in preparation for the right opportunity.
Paul Hasting’s Philip J. Marzetti handled tax matters, and Nelson Mullins lawyers from several offices also were in on the deal, including partner William R. Gaines Jr. on lending matters and associates Bradley M. Burman and Steve B. Park, all in Atlanta. Leach said that Genesis Capital served as the investment bank for the transaction.
Freeman Spogli’s lawyers were from Bingham McCutchen’s New York, Los Angeles and Orange County, Calif., offices.