June 15, 2015 — The big announcement finally happened — Cox Automotive is buying DealerTrack for $4 billion — approximately $63 a share — up from the $39 a share DealerTrack was trading at on Friday.

We’ll have our analysis in the next day or so. But this is the biggest deal in the vendor space (not counting Brookfield’s $4.3 billion purchase of Capital Automotive last year).

It dwarfs Bob Brockman’s $2.8 billion acquisition in 2006 of Reynolds and Reynolds (for the record, Reynolds did turn down a $5.2 billion offer from KKR in early 2013).

There will be a 45 day review period but it shouldn’t have any regulatory issues.

More to come….