Houlihan Lokey Advises AEA Investors
Houlihan Lokey is pleased to announce that AEA Investors LP (AEA) made a strategic investment in Hero Digital, a San Francisco-based provider of digital consultancy services to marketers and businesses. The transaction closed on November 18, 2021.
AEA was founded in 1968 by the Rockefeller, Mellon, and Harriman family interests and S.G. Warburg & Co. as a private investment vehicle for a select group of industrial family offices with substantial assets. AEA has an extraordinary global network built over many years, which includes leading industrial families, business executives, and leaders, many of whom invest with AEA as active individual investors and/or join its portfolio company boards or act in other advisory roles. Today, AEA’s approximately 100 investment professionals operate globally with offices in New York, Stamford, San Francisco, London, Munich, and Shanghai. The firm manages funds that have over $15 billion of invested and committed capital, including the leveraged buyouts of middle-market and small business companies, growth capital, and mezzanine and senior debt investments.
Since its founding just over seven years ago, and with the help of its previous investment partner CI Capital over the last five years, Hero Digital has become a critical digital innovation and transformation partner to some of the world’s leading brands. Hero Digital’s success comes from helping leading companies transform themselves to create new value for people and businesses, all powered by a vibrant, diverse, and high-performing company culture. Hero Digital blends strategy, design, data, and technology to help Fortune 1000 clients such as US Bank, Airbnb, Comcast, Jefferson Health, Salesforce, and AmeriGas invent ideas for new markets, transform customer experiences, and drive business performance through a connected customer-employee ecosystem. The partnership with AEA will support strategic investments in new digital offerings, next-gen technology capabilities, and geographic expansion powering customer and business experience transformation. The Hero Digital management team will remain in their roles, with CEO David Kilimnik serving on the board of directors.
“We are thrilled to partner with AEA as we enter the next phase of our evolution and growth,” said Mr. Kilimnik. “Their track record of success in backing strong leadership teams paired with their industry focus, global resources, and expansive network will accelerate our vision of becoming the preeminent, independent digital transformation company globally. Our company is on a mission to help our clients distill the simple truth about their customers and transform themselves to create value both for people and for business. We look forward to the power of our partnership with AEA as we add the industry’s best talent, expand our service offerings, and scale our presence globally.”
“We are excited to partner with Hero Digital to support the next phase of their strategic evolution,” said John Almeida, Partner at AEA. “With its broad offering that connects brand experience to e-commerce, loyalty, and business experience operations, Hero Digital has established itself as a trusted partner to a growing portfolio of market-leading clients. Hero Digital’s innovative approach, combined with its best-in-class culture and management team, uniquely positions it to take advantage of new opportunities in an increasingly complex environment for customer and business digital experience solutions. We look forward to building on Hero’s past success as we support the business on its next phase of growth.”
Houlihan Lokey served as the financial advisor to AEA Investors in connection with the transaction. This deal highlights Houlihan Lokey’s leading experience across marketing services and IT services and represents the firm’s 21st transaction in these sectors in the past 24 months.