Mattel, the toy company famous for its Barbie dolls, has bought Hit Entertainment, the children’s media group behind Bob the Builder and Thomas the Tank Engine, from Apax Partners for $680m.
The purchase of the intellectual property and marketing rights for the pre-school toy brands follows a protracted and complicated auction which officially started in March. Mattel, the world’s biggest toy company by sales, will finance the deal with a mixture of cash and debt.
The $680m price tag, equivalent to 9.5 times earnings before tax, interest, depreciation and amortisation, falls below initial expectations. Bankers were talking about a company value of as much as £1bn ($1.5bn) when plans of the sale emerged a year ago.
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