Cafecitos, cigars and a chance to experience Cuban culture? These are some of the many facets of a trip to Havana. But being able to use a credit card instead of cash to pay for your trip? Priceless.
Pompano Beach-based Stonegate Bank (NASDAQ: SGBK) issued the first of its MasterCard credit cards for use in Cuba on Tuesday.
The South Florida bank was the first – and so far the only bank to launch a debit card for use by U.S. travelers in Cuba. The bank announced a partnership with MasterCard when it launched the debit cards last year.
That move followed Stonegate’s decision to become the first U.S. bank to establish a relationship with a Cuban bank.
Since President Barack Obama announced the intention to re-establish a relationship with Cuba, Stonegate has been actively increasing its banking ties to the island nation. At the request of the U.S. Department of State, Stonegate agreed to handle the banking for the Cuban government in the U.S., which encompass services such as travel visas and any dealings with embassies in Washington, D.C.
The issuance of a credit card has been a work-in-progress for the last nine months. To commemorate the occasion, Stonegate is offering a limited-edition card featuring a design by Cuban artist Michel Mirabal.
"Hopefully, more U.S. Banks will allow their customers to use their cards in Cuba, thus helping to alleviate the burden on travelers to the island," Stonegate President and CEO Dave Seleski said. "I am very excited to introduce these products which I believe will benefit our corporate clients and provide a meaningful diversified income stream to the bank."
In addition to personal credit cards, Stonegate announced plans to issue corporate, purchasing, payroll and prepaid cards within the next 30 days.
Debit and credit cards certainly allow increased flexibility when traveling in Cuba. However, Cuba and its businesses still need to establish infrastructure to accept debit and credit cards to process sales.
Stonegate is one of the largest South Florida-based banks, with $2.45 billion in assets.
Bal Harbour Shops has purchased the Church by the Sea’s lot for $30 million, marking another step forward for Whitman Family Development’s expansion plans for the upscale shopping center.
Miami-Dade County records show the now torn down church, formerly the oldest in Bal Harbour, sold last week to Bal Harbour Shops LLLP. The 27,000-square-foot property was part of a contentious battle between the Miami-Dade County’s historic preservation board and the church, the latter of which agreed to sell to the Whitman family. The board voted against protecting the church from demolition in November. It was torn down in December.
The church has been a key part of the neighboring mall’s renovation and expansion. The $400 million project will include a new entrance, wider sidewalks, a new canopy, landscaping and some new exterior walls. The upgrades will also include the addition of Barneys New York, expansions of existing Neiman Marcus and Saks Fifth Avenue stores, and new luxury boutiques. Bernard Zyscovich of Zyscovich Architects is the lead designer on the project.
Whitman has also agreed to build a new home for the congregational church.
Last year, Whitman president and CEO Matthew Whitman Lazenby said that “without exaggeration the last 40 years have been spent trying to negotiate a deal with the congregational church,” and that Whitman’s plans ensure “that the Village of Bal Harbour remains the center for luxury living.”
Robert Finvarb, whose development company has two hotels about to open on Miami Beach, discusses the superheated hotel scene in Miami.
With two hotel construction projects coming in for a landing, developer Robert Finvarb was sounding confident during an interview earlier this month.
Construction of both properties — the Hyatt South Beach and AC Hotel Miami Beach, both set to open in April — was running on schedule, no easy task in a market flooded with renovation and new building projects in recent years.
“I pride myself on that,” said Finvarb, a Miami Beach native. “This is all we do.”
After graduating from law school and working for nine years as an attorney, including for South Florida developers, Finvarb founded real estate investment and development company Robert Finvarb Companies, where he is president and CEO.
In an interview at the company’s Courtyard by Marriott South Beach at 1530 Washington Ave., Finvarb talked about the popularity of the area for investors, the advantages of being a local surrounded by outside developers and the challenges of landing a project (not to mention two) on time.
Q. What led you to start your business here in 2002?
A. Just the familiarity of the area, and actually my dad and I collaborated on this project with my brother. It was an emerging area of South Beach. This Washington Avenue corridor was dark, dingy, dirty. And as we’ve seen in many other markets that we’ve developed, it became an economic engine for this little part of South Beach because it legitimizes it.
And one thing that developers have is a herd mentality of following those that pioneer certain areas. Look at Wynwood, look at Design District. And I’m not going to put this on par with what the Goldmans did in Wynwood or what Craig Robins did in Design District, but this was our little opportunity to gentrify this area. We’ve done the same thing in D.C., we’ve done the same thing in other markets where they’ve been urban emerging markets and we’ve put Marriott hotels in areas that people did not associate as a destination for business or leisure travel.
Q. And how have you seen, down here especially, development opportunities change since you started?
A. Dramatically. Actually, most of the projects that I started with on my own were outside of South Florida. So our company did the [Courtyard by Marriott] project over by Fort Lauderdale airport. Then we went to Northern Virginia, D.C., Arizona, New York. Then I came back. ...
It’s crazy, I’ve been through three cycles and we’ve been in business for 12 years. So we came in and I was able to grow my business quite aggressively because the capital markets were extremely active and didn’t really limit my ability as a new developer or as a neophyte in the market from procuring financing. And then my legal background saved me in a sense that I was conservatively leveraged on all these deals so we were able to go through the downturn without ever missing a beat. And we actually were able to capitalize on a couple of opportunities during the downturn. We picked up the [Courtyard by Marriott] hotel in Coconut Grove and we picked up a second one outside of Chicago in a suburban market. Basically that was an alternative strategy during the downturn because construction financing for new projects was nonexistent.
Over the last three and half years, we got back into the market from a construction and development perspective and either developed or are in the process of developing two hotels in New York and three down here, including [Residence Inn by Marriott in] Sunny Isles. [A fourth, the Springhill Suites by Marriott — Miami Airport East, opened about five year ago.]
Q. Have you found that the opportunities available to you are reduced because there’s a lot of competition?
A. Huge. Right now, I mean, in my mind, I’m not really pursuing any new opportunities down here. I think the market is at a level that’s unsustainable from a cost perspective for a new project. Between construction, the cost and acquisition of land — you’re basically competing with condo developers, and they can pay more than a hotel developer can.
I don’t feel that, for the product type that we are accustomed to developing, that it’s a sustainable model. We’re long-term holders, we don’t sell. So we have to be in at a price point that allows us to survive for a long period of time.
And inevitably in the hotel space, there’s ups and downs. The market basically moves in tandem with GDP. So right now ’15 is expected to be strong, ’16’s strong. Let’s see then what happens with a presidential election, oil prices, international travel. There’s so many variables that play into it.
Q. What are the hottest areas for developers now?
A. In South Florida, South Beach remains a crown jewel. There are barriers to entry, obviously, both naturally and imposed by local zoning regulations in terms of the preservation of the Art Deco District and historic buildings. Those aren’t going to change. What scares me is downtown, Brickell I think is getting overbuilt to levels that are not sustainable because you’re not able to drive rate in our business as aggressively on the west side of the [MacArthur] Causeway as you are here on the beach.
Q. Do you think there are pockets that are still kind of hidden gems, undiscovered?
A. I’m very curious to see what happens in Wynwood and Design District. From the retail perspective, restaurants, it’s not a hidden pocket. It’s unproven from the hotel side. Will Wynwood one day become SoHo? Or will it just remain sort of a weekend destination, but not necessarily the kind of place you want to sleep, spend the night? So those are questions that we continue to ask ourselves. And the thing with hotels is: Being a pioneer is extremely risky. You could hemorrhage money with a hotel. If you build it and they don’t come, you’re screwed.
We have a hotel by the medical district, it’s a Marriott Springhill Suites. It does relatively well, but from a rate perspective, it’s dramatically lower to the point where by today’s dollar, it’s an unsustainable business model. So that’s why I’m hesitant to develop something on the west side. Because there’s no differentiating point between what you’re paying for construction on Miami Beach and the west side of the causeway. But your rates are dramatically different.
Q. What’s in your sights moving forward?
A. We’ve got a full plate. We’re not publicly traded, we’re not institutionally backed. It’s all private equity. [We’re] patient, so we’ve got plenty on our plate and if we develop and just continue to hold and operate and manage and extract value out of these assets, we’re fine waiting for the next opportunity. But we’re not going to chase an opportunity just to be active.
Q. What advantages do you think being a longtime local developer give you here?
A. I’ve seen it. When I go into markets like D.C. or Arizona, there’s just knowledge that you’re trying to gain from experts and locals that is still going to be second- or third-hand. Whereas here, I’ve lived it. I know where my wife and I want to go for dinner on a Saturday night that’s edgy versus more established and exciting, where we want friends of ours that are visiting to be staying. I don’t need a feasibility study to tell me how an opportunity is going to perform down here.
Q. So you’ve got these two hotels getting ready to open right around the same time. Why did you want to do those two things so close to each other, and how much sleep are you getting?
A. Not a lot of sleep, but I feel that the window of opportunity to develop the product type that I’m accustomed to developing, that three-and-a-half to four-star product, was closing. So we decided to dive in with both feet and assembled two fantastic teams and actually bolstered our team in house.
Q. I don’t think there’s a Hyatt in Miami Beach, right? And AC by Marriott?
A. First Hyatt in Miami Beach and the first ground-up AC by Marriott in the United States. So they’re pioneering.
Q. And how did you land those deals?
A. This is all I do, so I knew that Hyatt’s one of the leading brands in the world. Not having a presence in one of the most dynamic destinations screamed opportunity to me. It’s actually my first non-Marriott branded hotel, so when we presented them with the opportunity, they were extremely excited combined with our track record for executing developments. And I think it’ll play extremely well with the market, with the surrounding area. The Loews, it really complements the hotel product within that 16th and 17th and Collins corridor, which really is the most established hotel corridor in Miami Beach.
A. As far as the AC’s concerned, I’ve had a relationship with Marriott for 12 years. My family, we’re Hispanic, so it’s a brand that originated in Spain. And Marriott sort of involved me with its acquisition of the brand at a very, very early stage because I am bilingual, I’m a great ambassador from the developer side for the product. And the product obviously doesn’t play batter in any market than Miami because of the Latin and European influence.
Q. You’re right on deadline with both of them — how hard is that to do here?
A. Very. Especially now with so many construction projects on the condo side going on. The condo developers are extremely anxious to get completed and delivered. Nobody wants to get caught without a chair when the music stops. ... They’re heavily incentivizing subcontractors and their contractors to finish on time. So there’s a tremendous strain on resources. For me, I exhaled once the windows were on our buildings, frankly speaking.
Q. You mentioned knowing where you want your friends to stay and where you and your wife want to have dinner, so I’m curious: What’s the go-to dinner place these days?
A. The Edition: Matador Room and the Market. The Edition, in my opinion, from a five-star perspective, hit it out of the park. I don’t think anybody touches them now in the market.
One of the world’s largest hospitality companies, Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, might soon be the object of the largest-ever takeover of a U.S. company by a Chinese firm.The Chinese government is in discussion with three companies – Shanghai Jin Jiang International Hotels; HNA, parent of Hainan Airlines; and China Investment Corp., a sovereign wealth fund – one of which will bid on the massive hotel chain.
The government plans to choose just one company to avoid a possible bidding war for Starwood, which owns over 1,200 properties worldwide and manages brands such Westin, W Hotels and St. Regis, unnamed sources told the Wall Street Journal.
It’s not yet clear what the bidders are willing to pay, but the amount is likely to exceed Starwood’s start-of-Tuesday valuation of $12 billion, the Journal reported.
The hotel firm’s stock price jumped 9.1 percent Tuesday to 74.81 on the news, its highest level since 2009. Starwood in April said it was exploring various options that included a sale or merger, largely as a reaction to having lagged behind competitors like Hilton and Marriott. Its longtime CEO, Frits van Paasschen, resigned in February and Starwood has been selling off hotel properties this year.
A potential deal would be the latest in a string of major hotel pickups by Chinese firms. Last year, the insurance giant Anbang bought the Waldorf-Astoria at 301 Park Avenue in New York’s Midtown for nearly $2 billion. And in February, Sunshine Insurance Group, bought the Baccarat Hotel at 20 West 53rd Street, then a Starwood property, paying $230 million.
“Chinese investors have been pretty aggressive in the hotel market over the last year or so,” said Lukas Hartwich, an analyst at Green Street Advisors LLC, told Bloomberg. “Starwood has some pretty powerful brands. It’s an attractive platform, especially if you don’t already own a platform with that kind of cachet.”
All three firms involved in a possible bid for Starwood are state-controlled or partly owned by the Chinese government.
The Starwood Capital Group chair and CEO was on Bloomberg this week when the topic of the world’s second largest economy came up. While Starwood has invested in China in the past – namely in a Chinese hotel company and a Beijing office building – Sternlicht said his firm hasn’t tapped into the market “in four, five years now.”
When asked why, Sternlicht cited reservations regarding the country’s “rulebook” on foreign investment. “I know I can get in, [but] I’m not sure I can get out when I want to get out,” he said.
“I always think of China as a company masquerading as a country,” Sternlicht added. “There are rules that I’m not sure foreign investors should trust.”
Sternlicht also said that from a real estate investment perspective, Chinese interest rates “are not that low, so you have the inverse of the U.S. where if you’re buying really good real estate, you might find that the yield on the property is lower than the cost of debt.” That, he noted, “is one of my red lights in investment – don’t do that.”
Sternlicht was part of the joint venture that developed 1 Hotel & Homes in Miami Beach earlier this year. In June, a Starwood affiliate paid $17 million for a waterfront lot on North Bay Road.
A 63-unit apartment building in the Venetian Isles area of Hollywood has traded hands for $7.2 million.
Jacob El-Harar sold the building at 5230 Hollywood Boulevard to Burke Leighton Asset Management, Emile Farah, CEO of the Farah Group, told The Real Deal. Farah, as well as Jean Kelly and Zena Bardawell of the Farah Group, represented both sides of the transaction.
ew York-based Burke Leighton is a private equity investment company that owns and manages residential and commercial real estate properties, according to its website.
“The buyer is going to keep it as an income producing property,” Farah told TRD. “It’s a beautiful building. It is well kept and it has been totally remodeled and is almost fully leased.”
Farah said Burke Leighton financed the deal with $4.7 million in commercial mortgage backed securities (CMBS) financing, from a group led Miami Beach-based LNR Property that also included Berkadia and KeyBank. “Those loans are not easy to get approved, but our client, the buyer, was approved immediately,” Farah said.
Broward County property records show the building was last purchased in July 2012 for $4.05 million.
AutoNation will acquire 12 stores that represent $800 million in revenue.
The Fort Lauderdale-based automotive retailer (NYSE: AN) announced Wednesday that it would buy Allen Samuels Auto Group, which has locations in the Houston, Dallas-Fort Worth, Corpus Christi,Tyler, Ennis and Waco, Texas markets. Allen Samuels Auto Group has 31 franchises across its stores, including Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep, Ram, Chevrolet, Hyundai, Mercedes-Benz and Sprinter.
Once the acquisition is completed, Texas will represent about 25 percent of total revenue for AutoNation, with 53 stores including 82 franchises and 5,300 employees.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but it is expected to close in the first quarter of 2016.
Since the beginning of 2015, AutoNation has announced purchases that represent $1.7 billion in added revenue. Last month, the company closed a deal,announced in September, to buy a Mercedes-Benz store, an Audi store, and a Subaru and Volkswagen store from Valley Motors Auto Group in the Baltimore market. Another acquisition of 13 stores from Carl Gregory Enterprises is expected to close in the fourth quarter.
Once those acquisitions are complete, AutoNation will have a total of 265 stores and 372 franchises.
"We are pleased to have the opportunity to add 12 stores throughout the state of Texas," AutoNation Chairman, President and CEO Mike Jackson said in the announcement. "This acquisition will enhance our brand mix in the state of Texas. We also look forward to welcoming Allen Samuels' customers and 1,000 associates to the AutoNation family."
The company also reported an all-time record for its earnings per share – at $119 million, or $1.05 a share – in the third quarter of 2015, up 17 percent from the same period a year prior. Revenue totaled $5.4 billion, up 9 percent compared to the same quarter last year.
AutoNation hares were up 1.28 percent, or 75 cents, to $61.76 in morning trading. The 52-week high was $67.50 on April 22. The 52-week low was 53.73 on Aug. 24.
The newly announced merger agreement between Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc. and Rite Aid Corp. has the potential to be hugely disruptive to retail real estate across the country, according to industry experts analyzing early details of the proposed deal.
Walgreens and Rite Aid, the second and third-largest drug store chains respectively, reached a deal for Walgreens to acquire Rite Aid for a total enterprise value of $17.2 billion, including acquired net debt. Under the proposed merger, Rite Aid would become a wholly owned subsidiary of Walgreens Boots Alliance, and initially operate under its existing brand name.
The two drug store operators control roughly 200 million square feet of retail space and another 21 million of office and distribution space.
"Our complementary retail pharmacy footprints in the U.S. will create an even better network, with more health and wellness solutions available in stores and online," Walgreens Boots Alliance executive vice chairman and CEO Stefano Pessina said. "This combination will generate a stronger base for sustainable growth and investment into Rite Aid stores, while realizing synergies over time."
Pessina said they have already identified more than $1 billion in savings from potential synergies, although specific decisions regarding the integration of the two companies will be made jointly, Pessina said.
If the merger is approved, it would leave Walgreens and CVS as the two dominant drugstore chains in the country. Walgreens Boots Alliance has more than 13,100 stores in 11 countries, with more than 8,300 in the U.S. The company includes one of the largest global pharmaceutical wholesale and distribution networks with over 11 million square feet of distribution centers in the U.S. and 3 million square feet of office space.
Rite Aid has nearly 4,600 stores in 31 states and the District of Columbia. It owns or leases more than 7 million square feet of distribution space, not counting another 700,000 square feet of office and warehouse space near its corporate headquarters in Camp Hill, PA.
The retailer is currently building a 900,000-square-foot distribution center in Spartanburg, SC. Once operational, it had planned to consolidate its current distribution centers in Charlotte, NC, Tuscaloosa, AL, and Poca, WV.
"This will be a big one. Assuming they get approval from the FTC to merge, which I would assume they would get, this will mean a lot of real estate coming back to market," said Garrick Brown, vice president research, West Region for DTZ.
"I am guessing that they may have to divest some stores first (for Federal Trade Commission approval),” Brown said. “I wouldn't be surprised if they had to divest as many as 1,000 stores or more just to make the deal happen."
The likely closure of a large number of either Rite Aid or Walgreen's stores should the merger win approval could also have a ripple effect in retail centers in which other tenants in the center have co-tenancy clauses that allow them to opt out of their lease should the main drug store anchor in their center close.
"To make matters worse, owners whose shopping centers are collateral for loans run the risk of having their loans put into default or causing a 'trigger period' in the loan because of a major tenancy clause or by lowering debt service coverage ratios below the level the loan allows," said Jack Miller with Florida-based GFCIB and Advisors.
If they are allowed to merge, the stores most likely to be closed are those that either chronically underperform or ones that cannibalize sales from each other, said DTZ's Brown. Walgreens sales per square foot are typically higher that Rite Aid within the same markets, according to Brown and others.
And Rite Aid has a lot of older stores in larger formats that have fallen out of favor with the drugstore industry in general. As a result, there could be a movement to close old, larger Rite Aid stores as leases expire, Brown noted.
According to CoStar data, the two drugstore chains have more than one location in nearly 3,100 zip codes across the country. They operate more than four locations in 410 zip codes. And those counts don’t include overlap between neighboring zip codes.
For its part, Walgreens is already well versed in costs savings having implemented a chain-wide restructuring program. The company previously announced a $1.5 billion cost transformation program through the end of fiscal year 2017, with the cost reductions primarily targeting its Retail Pharmacy USA division.
During its most recent quarter, Walgreens closed 75 stores in the quarter bringing the total closures for the year to 84.
As for Rite Aid, it has been seeking a growth strategy. In an investor presentation this month, Rite Aid said it saw significant store relocations as a possible opportunity to develop new stores in underpenetrated markets and contiguous markets that have positive demographics.
Going forward, investors who like to purchase triple net leased properties could see a potential upside.
"Assuming Walgreens credit stood behind the Rite Aid leases going forward, this event would be a major positive for all Rite Aid owners as their store values would move substantially higher and now trade at Walgreens cap rates,” said Randy Blankstein, president of The Boulder Group in Chicago.
"Depending on the terms of the merger, this deal would make all of the top drug store companies investment grade, and thus would make the whole sector more desirable and likely cause transaction volume to increase as a result."
Currently, CVS and Walgreens have credit ratings of BBB, while Rite Aid is rated B, according to Blankstein.
Cap rates for single tenant CVS, Rite Aid and Walgreens properties hit historic lows in the net lease drug store sector in the third quarter of 2015. But with lower credit ratings, Rite Aid cap rates are the highest of the three with a median asking cap rate for a 20-year lease term at 6.15% compared to a 5% for CVS or Walgreens.
“As Rite Aid’s financial strength improves, investors have gained interest in the extra yield associated with Rite Aid properties. The additional yield can be attributed to Rite Aid not being an investment grade rated company similar to Walgreens or CVS,” Blankstein said.
MIAMI, FL (Oct. 22, 2015)
— When major developers need to find a prime piece of property in Miami's urban core, they turn to the Farah Group of Companies.
In the latest example of Farah Group's real estate dealmaking prowess, the company produced a rare acquisition opportunity near Downtown Miami for developer Michael Simkins. CEO Emile “Ur-Cousin” Farah and USA Lending Realty Vice President Zena Bardawell and Sales and Marketing Director Jean Kelly teamed up to arrange the sale of an Overtown apartment site to Simkins, who plans to develop the Miami Innovation Tower and eight additional buildings in the neighborhood.
“With so much development and investment activity occurring in and around Downtown Miami, it has become extremely difficult to find sites in the area,” Farah said. “That's where we come in. We have a 35-year track record of producing results for real estate clients when others cannot.”
USA Lending is owned and operated by Farah Group, which recently opened a new corporate headquarters at Synergy Workspaces in Downtown Miami's One Biscayne Tower. The company is hosting a special event to celebrate its new headquarters on Nov. 12.
In the Overtown deal, the Farah team facilitated the all-cash, $2 million sale of two apartment buildings totaling 28 units and three commercial units at 1117 NW Third Ave. and 220 NW 11th Terrace to Simkins. The site is located just west of Downtown Miami and the future All Aboard Florida station.
As part of the transaction, Farah worked out a deal with Simkins to allow existing tenants to remain at the apartment buildings in the short-term while the developer finalizes project plans for his Overtown portfolio. That was one of several obstacles Farah had to overcome to complete the sale. Other potential buyers could not obtain financing, so Farah had to find an all-cash buyer.
Farah Group specializes in complex transactions. Last summer, Farah brokered the $17 million sale of 18 acres in North Miami Beach known as Biscayne Village. The land was previously used by a gas distributor and designated as a brownfield site. Farah successfully educated the buyer about the future development potential of the site.
Shortly after completing the North Miami Beach deal, Farah, Bardawell and Kelly arranged the $6 million sale of a West Brickell hotel development property to Venezuelan developer William Hammani.
“In deals like these, our role goes beyond bringing a seller and buyer together,” Farah said. “We help our clients create a long-term vision for a site and assist them in carrying out that vision.”
To learn more about Farah Group's current real estate investment opportunities, visit "http://www.farahreacquisitions.com/".
About The Farah Group of Companies
Led by Emile “Ur-Cousin” Farah, The Farah Group of Companies specializes in all types of real estate transactions in Miami and beyond. Farah Group is often hired to facilitate complex deals involving a variety of distressed assets, including commercial bank-owned properties, short sales and bank notes. Headquartered at Synergy Workspaces in Downtown Miami's One Biscayne Tower, Farah Group has direct contact with bank asset managers throughout the world. That gives the company access to all property types, including multifamily communities, shopping centers, warehouses and developable land.
About Emile “Ur-Cousin” Farah
Emile “Ur-Cousin” Farah has been CEO of The Farah Group of Companies for more than 35 years. During that time, Farah has successfully completed the sale of a variety of real estate portfolios and rehabilitated thousands of square feet within buildings. Originally from Jerusalem, Farah is also a renowned philanthropist and community leader. He formed the Naim and Marie Foundation in honor of his parents. The foundation helps raise money for causes supporting the construction of new schools, orphanages and medical centers in areas like the Middle East. Farah has also been recognized for donating to the American Cancer Society and organizations supporting Autism awareness.
Farah is also the The World Ambassador ,. In that role, he travels around the world to encourage the exchange of culture, research and business between Cities worldwide.
Local mobile products giant Brightstar Corp. is getting even bigger.
Following a spate of recent acquisitions, the company announced Friday it had bought up Canadian consultancy WirelessWorks for an undisclosed sum. In a statement, Brightstar called WirelessWorks a solutions provider for mobile network operators and device manufacturers.
Company CEO Jaymin Patel said in the statement that the acquisition will allow Brightstar to expand its presence in Canada. The Miami company already offers device protection solutions in that country.
Brightstar was one of the fastest growing technology companies in South Florida last year, nearly doubling its global employee count to 9,000 through both organic growth and acquisitions. The company went from revenues of $7.2 billion to $10 billion, with 500 employees in South Florida
The firm has acquired widely, picking up other companies in Europe, Japan, the United States and India. The companies acquired were involved in the mobile distribution, service and accessories business lines.