PE titan cashes in a lot of SmileDirect chips

A big investment firm that led the last private funding round for SmileDirectClub a little more than two years ago has recently sold more than half its stake in the Nashville-based company.

Clayton Dubilier & Rice was the dominant investor in a $380 million round (which also included Kleiner Perkins and Spark Capital) that helped SmileDirect executives sustain their rapid growth and set the stage for the company’s initial public offering in September of last year. That funding gave CD&R — which has overseen more than $30 billion of investments since its founding in 1978 — control of 70.9 percent of SmileDirect’s Class A shares, which the IPO subsequently reduced to about 25 percent.