Management Buys Wyndham Jade

Staff -- Tradeshow Week, 7/17/2006

Wyndham Jade President and CEO Sue Trizila leads a group of the firm's managers who have bought the travel services company from the Lafayette Investment Fund.

Trizila said that, with the help of "very supportive lenders," she and her colleagues bought the company "because of the direction we feel passionately about taking Wyndham Jade in."

Another equity partner in the deal is Lucy Billingsley, who owned the company until it was sold to Lafayette in 2001.

Trizila, who has been with the Plano, Texas-based firm for 11 years, said Lafayette bought the company in April 2001 "with one objective, to build it up and then sell it in five or six years."

Now with full control of the company, Trizila and her colleagues plan to immediately make some investments in new technology that will "make it easier for our customers to grow their shows."

Once that mission is accomplished, she said, her hope is to begin offering more services, taking advantage of the same platform used now to provide housing and registration services.

Billingsley said, "I'm delighted to have this opportunity to come back and support the excellent management team Sue has assembled."

Besides Trizila, the managers involved in the acquisition are COO and CFO Brian Walsh; Beverly Buehler, executive vice president for operations and incentives; Kerry Wages, executive vice president for convention operations; and Tom Levine, chief information officer.

Involved in financing the transaction are the Bank of Texas and Harbinger Mezzanine Partners.