Contraves acquired; Name changed to Pinnacle Electronics
Contraves Inc., the descendant of companies that date back to the John Brashear Corp. in 1881, will now be known as Pinnacle Electronics LLC, after company management and a private investment firm acquired the Pittsburgh-based high-end precision electronics assembly company.
Private investment firm Main Street Capital Holdings LLC, founded by Don Jenkins and Gerald Prado, and law firm Eckert Seamans Cherin and Mellott LLC, announced the purchase Tuesday.
'This is our first deal in the Pittsburgh area,' said Main Street Capital principal and co-manager Prado, 'and we're very happy to have a deal in the Pittsburgh area.'
'Our basic criteria is that we should be able to double the size of the company within five years or we're not interested,' said Prado. 'We don't see any problem with that with this company. We have a local company, and a local lender, National City, was very interested in this deal.'
Prado declined to give any details about the terms of acquisition, but noted that Pinnacle's headquarters will remain in East Pittsburgh, and that the company would expect to add to the current 150 employees as the company grows.
Contraves Inc. is the former Contraves Goerz Corp., which was formed in 1974 from the combination of the Fecker Systems Division of Owens Illinois and Goerz Optical Co.
Prado said Main Street Capital first initiated negotiations to purchase Contraves in April, and was attracted to Contraves by trends in electronics manufacturing and the management team.
'They are very high-quality oriented, very customer-service oriented,' Prado said of the management team.
He added that Main Street Capital went ahead with the purchase even in a tight market for lenders.
'So you are forced to put more equity into a deal, and so returns are diluted,' he said. 'But our view of this was that the opportunity for growth and profit improvement was so great, that we could overcome the fact that the lenders weren't as aggressive in seeking to support it.'
