Vitamin Supplement Maker / Distributor NBTY, Inc sells to Wall Street Fund

Carlyle strikes $3.8 bln deal for NBTY

NBTY is a leading global vertically integrated manufacturer, marketer and distributor of a broad line of high-quality, value-priced nutritional supplements in the United States and throughout the world. Under a number of NBTY and third party brands, the Company offers over 22,000 products, including products marketed by the Company’s Nature's Bounty® (www.NaturesBounty.com), Vitamin World® www.VitaminWorld.com), Puritan's Pride® (www.Puritan.com), Holland & Barrett® (www.HollandAndBarrett.com), Rexall® (www.Rexall.com), Sundown® (www.SundownNutrition.com), MET-Rx® (www.MetRX.com), Worldwide Sport Nutrition® (www.SportNutrition.com), American Health® (www.AmericanHealthUS.com), GNC (UK)® (www.GNC.co.uk), DeTuinen® (www.DeTuinen.nl), LeNaturiste™ (www.LeNaturiste.com), SISU® (www.SISU.com), Solgar® (www.Solgar.com), Good 'n' Natural® (www.goodnnatural.com), Home Health™ (www.homehealthus.com), Julian Graves, Ester-C® (www.Ester-C.com) and Natural Wealth (www.naturalwealth.com) brands. NBTY routinely posts information that may be important to investors on its web site.

Carlyle Group [CYL.UL] struck a $3.8 billion deal on Thursday to buy U.S. nutritional supplements maker NBTY Inc (NTY.N), beating several other buyout firms to clinch one of the biggest private equity deals so far this year.

Carlyle's $55.00 a share cash offer, unanimously approved by the board, is a 47 percent premium to NBTY's Wednesday close and values the company at more than eight times its earnings.

Shares of NBTY jumped as much as 44 percent to their highest level in three years.

"There was an auction of several private equity firms and the board of directors took what they believed to be the best offer," said CFO Harvey Kamil in an interview. "We are happy that shareholders are prospering from this transaction."

The other buyout firms circling the firm included TPG Capital LP [TPG.UL], Bain Capital, Apollo Global Management, Hellman & Friedman and Blackstone Group LP (BX.N), several sources familiar with the matter said.

The deal with Carlyle includes a "go-shop" provision of 35 days allowing others to counterbid.

Blackstone is no longer involved or considering NBTY, however, one of those sources said.

The purchase price of Carlyle's deal is made up of $2.4 billion debt financing, of which about $1.5 billion is in bank debt and about $900 million is bonds, one of the sources said. That means the deal is financed by 63 percent debt and about 37 percent equity.