12:12 p.m. | Updated
The investment firm Cerberus Capital Management announced Tuesday that it would sell its stake in the country’s largest gun maker after one of the company’s guns was used in the Connecticut school shootings.
Cerberus said that it was putting the company, Freedom Group, up for sale just hours after one of its largest investors, the California teachers’ pension fund, said it was reviewing its relationship with the firm. Also late Monday, the California treasurer raised concerns about the state’s pension funds’ investments in gun companies.
Cerberus, a private-equity and hedge fund firm based in New York, is owned by the billionaire financier Stephen A. Feinberg. His father lives in Newtown, Conn., where the shooting rampage occurred. The authorities say that Adam Lanza, the shooter, used a semiautomatic rifle made by Bushmaster, one of Freedom Group’s brands, to kill 26 people at Sandy Hook Elementary School, as well as his mother and himself.
Early Tuesday morning, about 1 a.m. — after several media outlets highlighted Cerberus’s ties to the gun maker, and the California officials issued statements — Cerberus issued a 400-word statement announcing the planned sale of the company. “It is apparent that the Sandy Hook tragedy was a watershed event that has raised the national debate on gun control to an unprecedented level,” the release said.
“The debate essentially focuses on the balance between public safety and the scope of the Constitutional rights under the Second Amendment,” Cerberus said. “As a firm, we are investors, not statements or policy makers.” The statement added: “It is not our role to take positions, or attempt to shape or influence the gun control policy debate. That is the job of our federal and state legislators.”
It is unclear who, if anyone, would be a potential buyer for Freedom. Over the last two days, shares of the publicly traded United States gun makers, Sturm, Ruger & Company and Smith & Wesson, dropped precipitously on the fears of increased gun regulation. Several foreign gun manufacturers, including Forjas Taurus of Brazil and Herstal Group of Belgium, could be possible suitors, according to a banker familiar with the weapons industry.
Cerberus said that it would retain a financial adviser to sell its interests in Freedom Group and then return the sale proceeds to its investors. “We believe that this decision allows us to meet our obligations to the investors whose interests we are entrusted to protect without being drawn into the national debate that is more properly pursued by those with the formal charter and public responsibility to do so,” said the statement.
The publicity-averse Mr. Feinberg came under scrutiny last decade after buying two of the country’s most well-known companies, the automaker Chrysler and the finance arm of General Motors. Cerberus, which made those acquisitions just before the financial crisis struck, suffered losses on both deals, and Mr. Feinberg told his investors that Cerberus would in the future stay away from prominent investments.
Despite that vow, Mr. Feinberg again has found himself under the spotlight because of a Cerberus holding. Freedom Group’s origins date to 2006, when Cerberus acquired Bushmaster Firearms. The firm then consolidated the fragmented gun industry, acquiring at least six other brands and rolling them into one company to create Freedom Group, which is based in Madison, N.C. Freedom is on track to post about $900 million in revenue this year.
Other brands under the Freedom Group umbrella include Remington Arms, the country’s largest and oldest maker of rifles; Marlin Firearms, a manufacturer of lever-action rifles; and Advanced Armament, a maker of pistol silencers. The company proposed an initial public offering in 2009, but withdrew its plans last year after its financial performance weakened.
Mr. Feinberg has a penchant for investing in defense-related businesses. Its holdings include the military contractor IAP Worldwide Services and the satellite provider GeoEye. Cerberus also explored an investment in Blackwater USA, the private-security contractor since renamed Xe Services, but a deal never materialized.
A major Republican donor, Mr. Feinberg has a number of former prominent political and military officials on Cerberus’s payroll, including Dan Quayle, the former vice president; John Snow, the former Treasury Secretary; and George A. Joulwan, the former Supreme Allied Commander of Europe. He is also an avid shooter and hunter — favoring a Remington 700 — and has a membership at the upscale hunting club Mashomack Preserve Club in Pine Plains, N.Y.
A fellow firearms enthusiast and Cerberus executive, George Kollitides, has served as Freedom Group’s chief executive since March. Mr. Kollitides is a trustee of the N.R.A. Foundation and a director of the New York State Rifle & Pistol Association.
Mr. Feinberg, 52, was raised in Spring Valley, N.Y., in Rockland County, and after graduating from Princeton, started his Wall Street career working at Drexel Burnham Lambert during the bank’s heyday in the 1980s. After developing a specialty trading in the distressed debt of troubled companies, Mr. Feinberg struck out on his own to start Cerberus.
His father, Martin Feinberg, 86, lives in Newtown, Conn., according to public records. It is unclear whether Mr. Feinberg’s father played any role in Cerberus’s decision to divest its stake in Freedom Group.
Though Freedom Group was unable to complete its I.P.O., the deal has been a successful one for Cerberus, according to a person briefed on the investment.
If it is able to sell Freedom Group for a profit, some of the beneficiaries would be Cerberus’s investors, which include two of the country’s largest and most influential pension funds — the California State Teachers’ Retirement System, or Calstrs, and the California Public Employees’ Retirement System, or Calpers.
On Tuesday, Ricardo Duran, a spokesman for Calstrs, applauded Cerberus’s decision to unload Freedom Group and said it would remain an investor with the firm. Calstrs has $600 million invested in Cerberus funds, which, as a result, give it a 2.4 percent stake in Freedom Group.
“They are taking a very responsible approach to this and we are happy that they’re selling,” said Mr. Duran.
Bill Lockyer, the California Treasurer, said that the state’s pension funds should not own stakes in any companies that make assault weapons.
“Our objective is to make sure that both Calpers and Calstrs are scrubbed clean of any investment in any company that makes guns that are illegal in this state and expose our communities to violence and death,” said Mr. Lockyer, in a statement. “We’re pleased that Cerberus is taking this action but our initiative extends far beyond one company.”
Neil Gough contributed reporting from Hong Kong.
DealBook: Private Equity Giant to Sell Gunmaker; Cites Massacre
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