Cleary Gottlieb represented Texas Pacific Group, The Carlyle Group, and Permira Advisors in the $17.6 billion acquisition of Freescale Semiconductor, Inc. TPG, Carlyle and Permira were participants in a private equity consortium led by Blackstone Capital Partners. The deal is the largest-ever leveraged buyout of a technology company, surpassing last year’s $11.3 billion buyout of SunGard Data Systems.
TPG, Carlyle and Permira are leading private equity firms. Freescale, an S&P 500 company, was formed in July 2004 as a spin-out of the semiconductor products division of Motorola, Inc. Freescale is the third largest chip maker in the U.S. and the ninth largest in the world, with 2005 revenues of $5.8 billion.