Macquarie Investment Infrastructure ended its long ownership of FBO chain Atlantic Aviation late last week. On Friday, Macquarie announced the conclusion of Atlantic's sale to global investment firm KKR. The terms of the deal, revealed in June, had a sale price of $4.475 billion, including approximately $1 billion in assumed debt.

For Macquarie, it marks the end of a remarkable span owning the FBO chain it purchased back in 2004 for a reported $238 million. Under its watch, Atlantic grew to become the world’s second-largest service provider chain, behind Signature Flight Support, which also was sold this year.

“We’ve been with Macquarie for 17 years and they’ve been a fantastic partner,” said Atlantic CEO Lou Pepper. “I’ve been the CEO running it for the past 17 years, so I want to give them props as they brought a lot of capital and we went from 12 FBOs to 70 in that time.”

Atlantic had been quiet on the acquisition front over the past several years, but Pepper expressed excitement over the possibilities under the new ownership. “KKR is bringing a lot of experience and capabilities into the business and they like our platform,” he told AIN. “We’re going have the ability to expand, we’re going to do it strategically as we’ve always done in the past.”