Ridgemont Equity Partners to buy majority stake in Cross River Fiber

Middle-market buyout and growth equity investor Ridgemont Equity Partners says it has agreed to acquire a majority interest in New Jersey-based dark fiber service provider Cross River Fiber. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Ridgemont expects to close the transaction in the fourth quarter of this year.

In conjunction with the closing, Webster Bank and CoBank will provide debt financing to support the transaction as well as future growth.

Cross Fiber’s senior management team will retain what Ridgemont termed "a substantial ownership stake" in the company and remain in their current roles.

"Our partnership with Ridgemont will help ensure that Cross River has continued access to capital for growth as well as broader access to strategic and financial resources. The existing management team will continue to lead and manage the business and there will be no major changes to our day-to-day business operations," said Enzo Clemente, CEO of Cross River.

"Ridgemont has a terrific track record of investing alongside management teams in high-growth sectors within the communications infrastructure arena, making them an ideal partner in helping us expand our market opportunities and enhance our current business momentum," he added.

Cross River supplies dark fiber services in the New York metro and New Jersey area to customers in the financial, carrier, education, healthcare, and enterprise sectors (see, for example, "Cross River Fiber completes ultra-low latency route in New Jersey"). Cross River and Ridgemont will use the investment to fuel the service provider’s expansion of its dark fiber network into new geographic markets.

"This transaction will mark our partnership's fifth investment in the metro fiber industry and we believe that Cross River possesses the qualities we look for most as investors – strong management, recurring revenue, operating leverage, and growth," said George Morgan, partner at Ridgemont. "Together, we are determined to utilize our combined experience to build a growing and high quality business."

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