Michael Dabney joined Centerview Partners in 2007. He has advised on over $200 billon of transactions across a broad range of industries with a particular focus on Food & Consumer Products, including buy-side and sell-side mergers and acquisitions, spin-offs, divestitures, special committee assignments, shareholder activism defense, restructurings and minority close-outs, as well as strategic advisory assignments.
Representative recent transactions include: Daou Vineyards on its sale to Treasury Wine Estates for up to $1bn; Sovos Brands on its $2.7bn sale to Campbell Soup; Bansk Group and its portfolio company Arcadia on Arcadia’s acquisition of Avrio Health; the BrandCo Ad-Hoc Group to Revlon on the Company’s Plan of Reorganization; the Special Committee of the Board of Weber on its $3.7bn sale to BDT Capital Partners; Joseph Phelps on its sale to Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessy; Mondelez’s acquisitions of Tate’s Cookies, Give & Go, Hu and Chipita; CVS Health’s $77 billion acquisition of Aetna; Pfizer’s Consumer Healthcare joint venture with GSK; Heinz’s $28 billion sale to 3G Capital and Berkshire Hathaway; Procter & Gamble on its proxy fight with Trian and its $15 billion sale of beauty brands to Coty in a Reverse Morris Trust; the Special Committee of the Board of Coty on its tender offer from JAB; Hain Celestial on its sales of Hain Pure Protein; Campbell Soup on its proxy fight with Third Point and sales of Bolthouse Farms to Butterfly Capital and Garden Fresh Gourmet to Fountain of Youth; Lipman's acquisition of Huron Produce and Movado’s acquisitions of Olivia Burton and MVMT.
Other transactions include Mondelez’s formation of a global coffee joint venture with D.E Master Blenders 1753, $14 billion acquisition of Keurig Green Mountain with JAB and $230 million sale of its 50% interest in Ajinomoto General Foods to Ajinomoto; Kraft Foods $27 billion spin-off of its North American grocery business, $22 billion acquisition of Cadbury and $4 billion sale of its North American pizza business to Nestlé; the $6 billion sale of Big Heart Pet Brands to J.M. Smucker; the $2 billion sale of Del Monte Foods Consumer Products business to Del Monte Pacific, Altria’s $12 billion acquisition of UST; Vestar’s $1 billion sale of Birds Eye to Pinnacle Foods Group; T-Bird Restaurant Group’s sale to H.I.G Capital and advisor to the Special Committee of the Board of Directors of DIRECTV on the exchange of all 21.8mm shares of super-voting Class B common stock for 26.5mm shares of single-vote Class A common stock.
Mr. Dabney graduated magna cum laude from Princeton University with a B.A. in economics. He lives in New York City with his wife and two daughters.