Foros Group

Foros is a boutique investment bank headquartered in New York. Founded in 2009 by former Deutsche Bank M&A chief Jean Manas, the firm provides divestitures, joint ventures, capital raising, spin-offs and split-offs, raid defense, and mergers and acquisitions advisory services.

In its first months of operation, Foros advised Virgin Mobile USA on its $680 million sale to Sprint Nextel and Ciena Corporation on its $520 million purchase of Nortel’s Metronet Ethernet Networks. In November 2009, Foros advised IMS Health in its $5.2 billion acquisition by the private equity firm TPG and the Canada Pension Plan. This was the largest private equity sale in 2009.

After its initial year, the firm has played a role in several large transactions. In 2010, Foros advised Interactive Data Corp. (IDC) in its $3.4 billion acquisition by Silver Lake Partners and Warburg Pincus. In 2011, Foros advised Medco on its $28.5 billion sale to Express Scripts with JP Morgan and Lazard.

More recently, in 2016, Foros advised EarthLink on its $1.1 billion merger with Windstream; CA Technologies on its €600 million cross-border acquisition of Austrian-based Automic; Consolidated Communications on its $1.5 billion acquisition of Fairpoint Communications; and Intersil on its $3.2 billion cross-border sale to Renesas of Japan.

In 2011, league table agencies ranked Foros among the top 15 M&A advisors and among the five top independent advisory firms in the U.S. In 2015, Bloomberg ranked Foros 28th among takeover advisers in the U.S.