By Joseph N. DiStefano
Philadelphia Inquirer
Maranon Capital, Chicago, says it's invested $23 million in equity and mezzanine financing, plus $40 million in debt, to help Venio LLC, a New York unclaimed-property firm, acquire 65-year-old Keane Organization of Wayne.
Keane is a good-news company: It makes its living finding unclaimed stock, mutual fund, bank, brokerage and insurance accounts, locating their beneficiaries or other possible owners, and helping deliver the missing money. "We get paid primarily with fees from the deceased," or, more properly, their estates, says Venio boss Michael O'Donnell, who will head the combined companies.
O'Donnell told me he plans to keep most of Keane's 130 employees and its Wayne operations center, while shutting a satellite ofice that employs 10 in Salt Lake City. He said Venio and Keane were among the biggest firms in their arcane industry, which he predicted will continue to grow.
Keane's second-generation owner and chairman, Steve Grossman, says he and chief executive Dorothy Flynn and COO Caroline Castagno are starting a new company, RCP Solutions, to continue the businesses he's not selling: Keane's retirement-plan management, missing-beneficiary, government compliance and data-center units. The group "will expand call center operations," it said in a statement.
O'Donnell has been chief executive of Venio since it was formed two years ago from a group of New York-area professional firms backed by investor Donald DeMuth's BFW Capital of Teaneck, NJ.
www.philly.com/philly/business/Chicago_NY_firms_invest_63M_in_Keane.html