Redwood Capital Investment, the private equity unit of Baltimore billionaire Jim Davis, cofounder of Allegis Group, the largest staffing firm in the U.S., is taking a stake in Pepin Distributing, the Anheuser-Busch distributor in Tampa for five decades. Terms weren’t discloed.
Is it a sale? CEO Tom Pepin, whose father founded the distributorship in the early 1960s, strongly denies that. He describes the transaction as an infusion of capital to fund growth. “This was done to strengthen our competitive position in the market,” he told the Tampa Bay Times.
Redwood Capital has invested in at least two other beer distributorship: Silver Eagle Distributors of Houston, at the time the nation’s largest independent A-B distributor, and Lakeshore Beverage of Chicago.
Pepin will remain CEO of Pepin Distributing.