The Carlyle Group this week sold 10 million shares of Booz Allen Hamilton worth about $263 million, the latest in a series of stock sales that have pared the private equity’s interest in the McLean-based government consultant and technology services firm.
Carlyle, a District-based private equity firm, sold the shares for $26.31 apiece to J.P. Morgan Securities. Carlyle, which once owned 90 percent of Booz Allen, now owns 37 percent of it, according to Booz Allen.
Wednesday’s transaction was the fourth time Carlyle had sold shares in the company.
Carlyle bought Booz Allen in July 2008, in the midst of the financial crisis, for $2.54 billion. Carlyle put up nearly 50 percent of that in equity, due to the restrictions banks were putting on lending at the time.
The deal is now six years old, considered the tail end of private equity deals, which usually run four to six years.
Carlyle split the company in two, keeping ownership of Booz Allen Hamilton, which gets virtually all of its revenue from the government. Carlyle took the company public in November 2010.
The remaining piece of the company, Booz & Co., was sold. It operated as a partnership focused on commercial strategy and was later acquired by PricewaterhouseCoopers. It is now known as Strategy&.
Booz Allen also announced Wednesday that it is purchasing an additional 1 million shares of its stock from Carlyle.
Booz Allen employs more than 22,000 people and had revenue of $5.48 billion for the 12 months that ended March 31, according to its Web site.
The company is 100 years old.
Carlyle’s Booz Allen investment is part of the company’s Carlyle Partners V, a component of the firm’s flagship U.S. buyout group.
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