Dow Lohnes’s extensive experience in large scale transactions has proven invaluable to our postsecondary clients – both non-profit and for-profit. The firm’s unique blend of knowledge of corporate law, taxation, government regulation, employee benefits and finance, together with our extensive understanding of the special nature of postsecondary education, has enabled our clients to benefit from one-stop service for everything from acquiring a multi-campus company to creating hybrid for-profit/non-profit institutions.
Our expertise extends from helping manage very large and complex transactions to the extensive and arcane requirements that the U.S. Department of Education, accreditors and states impose on postsecondary institutions. Our regulatory and transactional lawyers, among whom are trained public accountants, are experienced in all types of transactions and can actively work with our clients to design structures that are most likely to pass muster and minimize regulatory limitations.
Dow Lohnes’s corporate lawyers specialize in mergers and acquisitions, private and public securities offerings, corporate organizations, loan and financing transactions, joint ventures and venture capital investments. They serve a diverse nationwide clientele that includes leading investment banks, underwriters, venture capital firms and lending institutions. Our lawyers guide our postsecondary clients through complex negotiations, multi-level financings and all other phases of major transactions from inception to closing.
Dow Lohnes’s corporate practice also includes finance and securities lawyers who represent issuers, underwriters and private placement agents, major regional and money center banks, indenture trustees and issuers in public and private offerings of debt and equity securities. In an era of enhanced oversight of financial and capital markets, our lawyers advise our clients in connection with regulatory compliance, securities disclosure, corporate governance and other public company matters. Dow Lohnes has assisted numerous companies in going public, as well as in going private, and has served as issuer’s counsel or underwriters’ counsel for many large debt and equity offerings.
Our combination of transactional expertise coupled with our exceptional understanding of the regulatory implications of acquiring a postsecondary institution enables us to efficiently represent our clients for the entirety of acquisition and sale transactions. By integrating corporate and regulatory due diligence, we can offer significant savings of time as well as economic benefit. Moreover, because we know precisely what to look for, we can more effectively help structure transactions and more aggressively represent our clients’ best interests.
Recent transactions in which our attorneys represented one of the parties involved in a major transaction included the following:
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We represented The National Labor College, a regionally accredited higher learning institution founded in 1969 by the AFL-CIO, in connection with a joint venture with The Princeton Review to establish the College for Working Families, an online education service that will bring high-quality degree programs to the AFL-CIO’s 11.5 million members and their families.
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We are representing Touro College in connection with the substitution of an affiliate of Touro as the sole member of the non-profit entity that operates New York Medical College, one of the nation’s largest private health sciences universities, which currently operates under the sponsorship of the Archdiocese of New York.
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We are representing INTO University Partnership, a U.K.-based company that operates a network of international student recruiters, in connection with its venture with the University of South Florida to provide “pathway” and English language training programs to enable international students to matriculate to USF undergraduate and graduate programs.
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We represented private equity firm BC Partners in connection with its acquisition of ATI Holding Company, which operates 24 career training centers in Texas, Florida, Oklahoma, Arizona and New Mexico.
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We represented Heald College in connection with its sale to Corinthian Colleges, Inc.
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We represented Wellspring Capital in connection with the sale of Vatterott Educational Centers to TA Associates. Vatterott serves more than 7,500 students annually on 22 campuses in nine Midwestern states.
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We represented AEA Investors LP, a leading private equity firm that specializes in investments in middle market companies, in its acquisition of the assets of Southwest Florida College, a post-secondary education institution with four campuses in Florida.
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We represented CAEL (the Council on Adult and Experiential Learning) in connection with the recent formation of EdLink, LLC – a new 50/50 joint venture between CAEL and ACT (the non-profit organization that administers the ACT college admissions exam). Combining business and operational assets contributed by CAEL with equity capital from ACT, EdLink will be the nation’s leading provider of employer tuition assistance program management services.
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We represented Camden Partners in connection with its investment in National American University.
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We represented Endeavour Capital in the acquisition of Southern Careers Institute in Austin, Texas.
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We represented Piccolo Educational Systems, Inc. and its subsidiary Nouveau Educational Systems, Inc. in connection with the sale of the Piccolo International University division to FL-EX Holdings, Inc. (dba TeamEDU).
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We represented the Brown Court Reporting School in Atlanta, Georgia, in connection with its sale to Coyne American Institute.
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We represented Neumont University in the transfer of its campus in Reno, Nevada, to Anthem Institute (formerly known as The Chubb Institute).
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We represented Grand Canyon as educational regulatory counsel in connection with its initial public offering and a secondary offering of common stock.