Dell founder part of group buying Tampa insurance giant in $7.7B deal

The Baldwin Insurance Group, a Tampa insurance holding company, has agreed to sell a majority share of the business for $7.7 billion and in the process transform itself into a private company.

In a statement Tuesday, the company says it has reached an agreement “under which an entity to be formed by Sequence Holdings and DFO Management will acquire a majority interest in the company in an all-cash transaction.”

Sequence, the statement says, is a holding company that buys established businesses in the service economy and DFO is the family investment office of Dell Technologies Founder, Chairman and CEO Michael Dell.

The sale has been unanimously approved by Baldwin’s board of directors and is expected to close in the first quarter of next year. However, it still needs shareholder and regulatory approvals.

Once it closes, the company’s stock will be delisted from the Nasdaq.

According to Baldwin’s statement, shareholders will receive $32.50 per share in cash, representing an 88% premium to the unaffected closing price June 17. That, the company says, is the day before news surfaced that the company was looking at a deal to go private.

As for the $7.7 billion price tag, the figure is based on an equity purchase price of approximately $4.6 billion and approximately $3.1 billion of debt that will be assumed or refinanced.

Once the deal is done, Sequence will merge with and into Baldwin, with Baldwin surviving as a wholly owned subsidiary of the company.

“Our vision is unchanged. Our strategy is unchanged. Our leadership and our culture are unchanged,” writes CEO Trevor Baldwin in a letter to shareholders posted on the company’s website. “The only thing changing is the capital structure around the firm, and we are changing it because the moment in front of us demands it.”

A few paragraphs later, he adds, “This moment is defined by two forces arriving at once: the greatest increase in talent mobility our industry has seen in decades, and artificial intelligence capable of rewiring how the work of insurance is done. Either alone would represent a defining moment. Together they present a once-in-a-generation opportunity.”

Baldwin, which was once known as Baldwin Risk Partners, was founded in 2011 and went public in 2019 raising $229.6 million when it debuted on the Nasdaq on its first day of trading, Oct. 24.

Baldwin, which operates under the brand name The Baldwin Group, today describes itself “as an independent insurance distribution firm delivering tailored insurance solutions to a wide range of personal and commercial clients.”

According to its second quarter earnings announced July 30, its revenue was $429.9 million for the quarter, up 30% when compared to the same period last year.

Michael Dell, in the statement, says “Baldwin has built something rare in insurance distribution: a genuine data and platform advantage, compounded over 15 years, led by a team with a clear and differentiated vision.

“DFO invests with the flexibility and patience of permanent capital, not as a fund working against a fixed exit clock. That structure enables DFO to back proven operators like Trevor and his team for the long term.”

Baldwin is the second public company based in Tampa to go private this year.

In July, the net lease health care REIT Sila Realty Trust sold itself to the asset management firm Blue Owl in a deal worth $2.4 billion. In addition, in a deal that hasn't closed yet, an entity connected to private equity firm Blackstone and Oldsmar-based MarineMax have agreed in August to a $1.5 billion all-cash deal that would take that entity private.