Carlyle Group Said to Be Leading Bidder for Getty Images
By Cristina Alesci and Jeffrey McCracken
Bloomberg
Aug 14, 2012 4:05 PM CT
Carlyle Group LP (CG) has taken the lead in bidding for Getty Images Inc., the photo archive being sold by private-equity firm Hellman & Friedman LLC, according to people with knowledge of the situation.
CVC Capital Partners Ltd., which is also bidding, has so far declined to top Carlyle’s offer, said one of the people, who sought anonymity because the talks are private. CVC could come back and up its bid later, said this person. Getty is likely to sell for about $3.3 billion to $3.4 billion, less than the $4 billion that Hellman & Friedman had been seeking, another one of the people said.
A sale at that price would probably generate a profit for San Francisco-based Hellman & Friedman, which paid $2.4 billion to take Getty Images private four years ago. Seattle-based Getty Images, the No. 1 distributor of archived photos, paid $96 million to buy smaller competitor JupiterImages in February 2009, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
Getty Images hired Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) and JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) a few months ago to examine a possible sale or public stock offering, according to another person with knowledge of the matter.
Getty Images was founded in 1995 by Mark Getty and Jonathan Klein, and was the first stock-photo business to license images online, according to its website. Competitors include Seattle-based Corbis Corp., owned by Microsoft Corp. co-founder Bill Gates.
Officials for Washington-based Carlyle Group, CVC, Goldman Sachs, Hellman & Friedman and JPMorgan declined to comment.
To contact the reporters on this story: Cristina Alesci in New York at calesci2@bloomberg.net; Jeffrey McCracken in New York at jmccracken3@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Jeffrey McCracken at jmccracken3@bloomberg.net; Anthony Palazzo at apalazzo@bloomberg.net
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