Bain Capital, The Blackstone Group Complete Sale of The Weather Company’s Product and Technology Businesses to IBM

In The News
February 1, 2016

Bain Capital and The Blackstone Group have completed the sale of The Weather Company’s B2B, mobile and cloud-based web properties, weather.com, Weather Underground, The Weather Company brand and WSI, its global business-to-business brand.

The combination of technology and expertise from the two companies will serve as the foundation for the Watson IoT Cloud platform, building on a $3 billion commitment IBM made in March 2015 to invest in the Internet of Things. The deal extends the scale and capability of IBM’s cloud data services platform and expands The Weather Company’s enterprise services capabilities and consumer reach to a global scale.

Ropes & Gray represented Bain Capital and Blackstone in the sale, announced Oct. 28, 2015, and which closed on Jan. 29. Bain Capital and Blackstone, along with NBCUniversal, had owned The Weather Company since 2008.

The Ropes & Gray team advising on the closing included private equity partners Newcomb Stillwell (Boston) and Neill Jakobe (Chicago); tax partner Aaron Harsh (Boston); executive compensation & employee benefits partner Loretta Richard (Boston); intellectual property transactions partner Edward Black (Boston); private equity counsel Michael Gilbert (Boston); intellectual property transactions counsel Thomas Burke (New York); and private equity associate Minh-Chau Le (Boston).