Northbrook-based private equity firm Sterling Partners acquired a majority interest in five-year old Tribeca Flashpoint Academy (TFA). The school, which has an enrollment of about 600 students, will use the new capital to “enhance and expand TFA’s ability to train tomorrow’s innovators in digital media,” said CEO/president Howard Tullman.
A veteran high-tech entrepreneur, Tullman, who led the original $16 million funding for Flashpoint, has been at the school’s helm since it opened in the fall of 2007, in a 70,000-sq. ft., two-floor campus in the heart of the Loop at 28 N. Clark St.
In April, 2010 New York-based Tribeca Enterprises, LLC became a 50% partner in Flashpoint and the Tribeca name was added. Tribeca, a diversified entertainment and media company that owns Tribeca Productions, was co-founded by Robert DeNiro, his producing partner Jane Rosenthal and her husband, Craig Hatkoff.
Hatoff said his company is very pleased to partner with Sterling “to continue to build out the vision for TFA.”
The deal with Sterling indicates that the stake of current partners would have been partially diluted to give the private equity firm a majority stake, although details of the acquisition were not disclosed.
TFA offers associate degrees in only five interrelated disciplines in the ever-evolving, trillion dollar digital entertainment industry: recording arts, film and broadcast, animation and visual effects, game and interactive media and graphic design and visual communication.
Besides its primary Loop campus, TFA has teaching facilities on two floors in the old NBC studios at the Merchandise Mart and at the CBS Broadcast Facility’s Studio B at 108 N. State Street.
Sterling Partners, which also has offices in Baltimore and Miami, said it has about $5 billion in assets under management.
