it had “overextended itself by acquiring 260 additional bowling centers that it had struggled to manage,” and that the demand for bowling products had decreased. Private equity firm Code Hennessy & Simmons bought the company in 2004 for $670 million to bring it out of bankruptcy. The transaction was financed in part by a $254 million sale and lease-back of 186 bowling centers to iStar Financial. Shortly after, the company began shedding its “non-core, foreign assets” to focus on improving the operations of its remaining centers. Fred Hipp, the former California Pizza Kitchen top executive who became President and CEO in 2004, said the strategy would now be to “bring as much focus as possible to the management of our core U.S. center and bowling products businesses." In 2005, AMF Bowling's products division and Italian-based Qubica Worldwide formed a 50/50 joint venture, QubicaAMF Worldwide. AMF Bowling went into Chapter 11 bankruptcy for the second time in November 2012. In its filing the company cited the challenge of adjusting to “the marked shift in the average bowling customer”. In 2013, AMF Bowling was brought out of bankruptcy through its merger with Strike Holdings LLC (doing business as the bowling center operator Bowlmor Lanes), bringing all remaining bowling centers and the 50% interest in the QubicaAMF joint venture under the control of Bowlmor AMF (now known as Bowlero Corporation). Bowlmor AMF sold its QubicaAMF joint venture interest to Qubica in 2014. Bowling centers At the formation of AMF Bowling in 1986, Commonwealth Ventures acquired the 110 AMF-owned bowling centers in the United States and abroad, as well as the 22 centers owned by one of the partners in Commonwealth Ventures, Major League Bowling Corp. Commonwealth then spent nearly $500 million revitalizing the bowling center business with a focus on expanding the appeal of bowling to league and casual bowlers. In 1991 the company hired former PepsiCo executive Mark Willoughby to head the bowling center business. Willoughby set out to make AMF Bowling the “McDonald's of bowling”. The company became the largest owner of bowling centers in the US in 1995 with the acquisition of Fair Lanes, Inc., which the year before had been through a leveraged buyout, filed for bankruptcy, and then emerged from it as it struggled to get the cash needed to renovate its centers. The addition of Fair Lanes's 106 bowling centers brought AMF Bowling’s total to 205 centers