Green Mountain Coffee Roasters Announces Closing of Common Stock Offering

Ropes & Gray represented Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, Inc., a leader in specialty coffee and coffeemakers, in the public offering of 9,479,544 shares of its common stock, announced May 11.

Also announced May 11, Green Mountain completed a sale of 608,342 shares of its common stock to Luigi Lavazza S.p.A. The public offering and concurrent private placement are valued at approximately $688.9 million.

The Ropes & Gray transaction team was led by Boston-based partner Jane Goldstein and associates Marko Zatylny, and Zach Blume. 

Ropes & Gray has handled other recent transactions for the coffee company, including the company’s:

• licensing agreement with Starbucks to produce a line of single-serve coffee containers for use in its Keurig machines;
• acquisition of Canadian gourmet coffee roaster Van Houtte from its private equity owner Littlejohn for  CDN$905 million in cash;
• sale of $250 million of newly issued shares of common stock to Lavazza, one of the world's largest coffee manufacturers and Italy's top-selling espresso brand, in 2010;
• $290 million acquisition of Diedrich Coffee, Inc. in 2010;
• $165 million acquisition of Timothy's Coffees of the World, Inc. in 2009;
• multimillion dollar acquisition of Tully’s Coffee Corporation in 2009;
• offering of 4 million shares of common stock in 2009.