The Despoiler
Made in Dayton, spent in Dayton
Private equity, hedge funds, megadeals and the carriers at your door.
Of $540 million raised, $341.1 million went to the private equity firm that bought Accelevation in 2025.
Accelevation, the Miami Township company that builds power and cooling equipment for data centers run by Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft and Oracle, began trading on Nasdaq Sept. 30 under the symbol ACCV. Its shares priced at $18, below the $20 to $24 range it had marketed, valuing the company at about $3.9 billion.
The offering raised $540 million, but most of it did not go to the company. Affiliates of Olympus Partners, the private equity firm that bought Accelevation in January 2025, received $341.1 million for 20 million shares they sold. The company's own $170.6 million is earmarked to pay down debt, according to its final prospectus. Olympus keeps about 85% of the voting power.
The prospectus also describes a tax receivable agreement requiring the company to pay Olympus-controlled entities 85% of certain future tax savings, about $589.8 million over time under the company's own illustration. Revenue grew from under $3 million in 2021 to $447.8 million in 2025. The prospectus does not say how many people Accelevation employs in the Dayton area or what those jobs pay.
Remainder computed by The Despoiler as the offering total minus the two amounts in the prospectus. Shares closed at $15.31 on Oct. 13, below the $18 offering price.
Sources: Accelevation final prospectus, SEC (Oct. 1); Ohio Tech News (Oct. 9); Renaissance Capital (Sept. 30); StockAnalysis.
Since 1979, Dayton's biggest companies have been sold to outside buyers again and again, and the headquarters and paychecks usually left with them. Largest deal: 7-Eleven bought Enon-based Speedway for $21 billion in 2021. NCR left for Georgia in 2009 after 125 years, taking 1,250 jobs. Pending: a $33 billion sale of AES, parent of AES Ohio.
335 of the biggest private equity takeovers of American companies since 1979, from RJR Nabisco to Subway, mostly bought with borrowed money. Biggest in today's dollars: KKR's 1989 RJR Nabisco buyout, about $84 billion. TXU, a $45 billion buyout in 2007, went bankrupt in 2014.
331 of the largest deals where one American tech, telecom or media company swallowed another, going back to 1929. Largest on record: AOL and Time Warner, 2001, $165 billion, over $300 billion today.
From the Data Edition of Oct. 21, 2026. + up · − down · = no change from the week before.