It was showtime for the employees of CoolIT.
In the late afternoon of March 25, as an unexpected snowstorm blanketed Calgary, Alberta, around 600 mainly frontline workers of CoolIT Systems gathered under an immense tent for a highly anticipated town hall. Less than three years earlier, private equity colossus KKR had purchased CoolIT, and as it does for all its acquisitions, awarded equity to everyone. In this case, that meant employees from thermal mechanical engineers to security guards at the liquid cooling purveyor for big tech infrastructure. Five days earlier, these folks got the official word that KKR and its partner, the sovereign wealth investor of Abu Dhabi, were selling their employer to Ecolab, the industrial water treatment giant, for $4.75 billion, or around 18 times CoolIT’s roughly $270 million valuation when KKR took charge.
