Clearlake Capital Group completed its acquisition of Cornerstone OnDemand, a global provider of talent management software. J.P. Morgan, BofA Securities, Ares, Golub Capital, Antares Capital, Barclays, Blue Owl, BMO Capital Markets, BNP Paribas, Credit Suisse, Goldman Sachs and Jefferies provided debt financing for the transaction.
The acquisition was previously announced on Aug. 5 and was approved by Cornerstone OnDemand shareholders on Oct. 12. Under the terms of the agreement, Clearlake acquired the outstanding shares of Cornerstone common stock for $57.50 per share in cash. As a result of the transaction, Cornerstone is now a privately held company and shares of Cornerstone common stock are no longer listed on the public market.
“Clearlake’s investment in Cornerstone is an exciting and important step for our company and our customers,” Phil Saunders, CEO of Cornerstone OnDemand, said. “Clearlake has shown immense confidence in our talented team and the direction we are headed. With their financial sponsorship to invest behind growth, we will have even greater opportunity to accelerate innovation and advance our customers’ efforts to ensure their organizations and people are future-ready.”
“Cornerstone has done a tremendous job providing best-in-class software solutions to a large base of global customers,” Behdad Eghbali, co-founder and managing partner of Clearlake Capital Group, and Prashant Mehrotra, partner of Clearlake Capital Group, said in a joint statement. “We are thrilled to partner with the company’s talented employees and believe that Cornerstone is well positioned to continue building on its strong leadership position for talent management SaaS solutions, both organically and through accelerated add-on acquisition activity.”
“We are proud to partner with Clearlake and the Cornerstone management team in the next stage of the company’s growth,” David Fishman, managing director and head of private equity at Vector Capital, and Andy Fishman, managing director at Vector Capital, said in a joint statement. “During our ownership of Saba Software, we developed tremendous respect for Cornerstone, and we believe the company’s innovative products and people will extend Cornerstone’s leadership position for years to come.”
Qatalyst Partners and Centerview Partners served as financial advisors to Cornerstone and Cooley served as legal counsel.
Morgan Stanley, Rothschild, J.P. Morgan, Goldman Sachs, BofA Securities, Barclays, Jefferies and William Blair served as financial advisors to Clearlake. Sidley Austin and Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison served as legal counsel to Clearlake in connection with the acquisition and debt financing.
