DealSheet - Simpson Thacher (Autumn Vacation Scheme 2026)

Want to impress in your Simpson Thacher Autumn Vacation Scheme Application?

This DealSheet includes:

🚢 5 recent deals ST advised on
🧠 Clear summaries for each
⚖️ Who ST advised, and the legal teams involved
💡 How to use these in your application

⏰ Deadline: 27 August

🛥️ Blackstone's Safe Harbor Buys MarineMax for $1.5bn

In short: Safe Harbor Marinas, a marina and superyacht services platform owned by Blackstone Infrastructure, took recreational boat and yacht retailer MarineMax private in a $1.5 billion all-cash deal.

📝 Details:

• MarineMax will delist from the New York Stock Exchange on completion, which is expected by the end of the year.
• The price represents a 96% premium to where the shares closed on 30 January, the last trading day before it became public that Safe Harbor had made an unsolicited, non-binding approach.
• The combination pairs MarineMax's 120-plus locations, including more than 70 dealerships and 65 marina and storage sites, with Safe Harbor's 150-plus locations across the US and Puerto Rico.
• Blackstone acquired Safe Harbor in 2025 in a $5.65 billion deal.

🤔 Why it matters:

A private equity owner is buying a competitor and bolting it onto a business it already runs. Safe Harbor stores and services boats; MarineMax sells them and runs marinas of its own. That means, a customer could buy a boat, keep it and have it serviced within the same group.

There's two key points to note here to show you understand what happens to a listed company once a takeover approach becomes public:

• first is the 96% premium, which is far above the 25% to 40% you would normally expect. That gap suggests the stock market was valuing MarineMax well below what a buyer already operating in the sector thought the business was worth.
• second is the sequence of events. Safe Harbor's approach was not invited, and once news of it leaked at the end of January, MarineMax's board had limited room to simply carry on as an independent company. Running a competitive process was the sensible response, both to push the price up and to show shareholders the directors had tested the market properly.

⚖️ Who did Simpson Thacher advise?