Earlier this month Buyouts contributor Katie Roof caught up with Kevin Sheehan, CEO of Norwegian Cruise Line, just after it priced its IPO on January 17. The company is backed by Apollo Management Group and TPG Capital.

Final bids for Smart & Final, which is backed by Apollo Global Management, are due later this month, sources tell peHUB. Centerbridge Partners and Ares Management are still vying for the grocery retailer, persons say. Smart & Final could go for $700-$900 mln.

In a blow to its private equity backers Oaktree Capital Management and Apollo Global Management, aluminum processor Aleris postponed its planned $500 million IPO on Wednesday.

Private equity firm KSL Corp. raised its bid for Great Wolf Resorts by 12% to $234 million as it works to top rival buyout group Apollo Global Management, Reuters reported. Great Wolf, North America’s largest operator of indoor water parks, said in a statement that it had received an unsolicited letter from KSL proposing to [...]

Bain, Advent and the Blackstone Group emerge as the most active U.S. buyout shops in Europe.

This year’s secondary market for private equity is expected to outpace last year’s, sources tell peHUB. LPs—particularly, pension funds—are doing more to get out of LBO firms and reallocate into cash, according to interviews with PE professionals and secondary transaction execs. One such pension LP is the secretive $22 billion Indiana Public Retirement System, which [...]

(Reuters) – Apollo Global Management and Goldman Sachs have entered the auction for Bank of America Corp.’s British and Irish credit card portfolios, the Financial Times reported on Tuesday. The U.S. groups have joined forces to bid for the MBNA Europe Bank business — part of Bank of America’s MBNA credit card brand — the [...]

Don’t expect a rush of private equity execs to start their own firms, said Eric Zinterhofer, co-founder of Searchlight Capital.

Zinterhofer, who was speaking at the Buyouts Conference in Dallas Thursday, was asked about a Triago report that predicts up to half of GPs could disappear in the next five years as junior PE execs form their own firms. “I don’t think you’ll see a ton of new guys starting their own firms,” Zinterhofer said during the Newsmakers panel.

Why is this? Some PE execs may complain, but most don’t end up leaving their firms, Zinterhofer told me on the sidelines of the conference. “While there is always a degree of angst among senior professionals at PE firms, at the end of the day the job is very attractive and the ‘golden handcuffs’ are significant,” Zinterhofer said.

It’s also a tough fundraising environment for …

(Reuters) – Top executives at private equity funds said on Tuesday that the time was ripe to take greater risk in Asia, encouraging an annual conference here to invest in distressed debt opportunities and small to mid-sized companies. “When people are not investing is the best time to invest, when people are not taking risks [...]

Kunal Kamlani will rejoin Presige Cruise Holdings as president and COO after serving as head of BofA/Merrill’s global investment solutions division. The addition of Kamlani follows the recent promotion of Oceania Cruises’ co-founder and long-time president, Bob Binder. Prestige Cruise Holdings (PCH), the parent corporation of Oceania Cruises and Regent Seven Seas Cruises, was formed in 2007 by Apollo Management.