Ropes & Gray Represents Genstar Capital in its Investment in Lightspeed Systems

Ropes & Gray represented Genstar Capital in its investment in Lightspeed Systems. Genstar joins existing Lightspeed investor Madison Dearborn Partners. Genstar and funds affiliated with Madison Dearborn will each have equal ownership stakes in Lightspeed while the founders and management team also retain a significant stake. Terms of the transaction, announced on March 2, were not disclosed. The press release is here.

Lightspeed Systems is the market leader in online student safety and effectiveness serving over 20 million students in 39 countries and 32,000 schools globally. Genstar Capital is a leading private equity firm based in San Francisco with approximately $33 billion of assets under management.

The Ropes & Gray team that represented Genstar was led by private equity partner Chau Le (San Francisco), and included tax partner Leo Arnaboldi III (New York), leveraged finance partner Michael Lee (Boston), private equity counsel Peter Wang (San Francisco), leveraged finance counsel Amy Olson (San Francisco) and benefits partner Loretta Richard (Boston).