Blackstone Buys Alliance Automotive

Blackstone Group has paid an estimated €440 million to acquire Paris-based Alliance Automotive Group, the European automotive parts distributor, the Financial Times reports.

Alliance supplies repair parts to some 25,000 shops in France and the U.K. The company had been owned by France's Weinberg Capital Partners since 2006. Over that time the distributor purchased 30 companies and more than doubled its annual revenue to €1.2 billion.