Here are this week’s top 10 posts based on number of pageviews from peHUB’s regular readers. Hot topics included powerful women in private equity, details of Zynga’s upcoming IPO and the biggest biotech deals of Q4 so far.

1. Slideshow: Five Powerful Women In Private Equity – by Bernard Vaughan
2. Zynga’s IPO By The Numbers And A Look At Its Three Classes Of Stock: Slideshow – by Mark Boslet
3. Slideshow: Where the Biotech & Device Investors Are–Q4 Edition – by Jonathan Marino
4. Founders Fund on Monday Meetings, Patience, and That New $625 Million Fund – by Connie Loizos
5. Wanted: Private Equity High-Flyers in Growth Areas – by Reuters
6. Slideshow: A Selection of Euro Buyout Fund Terms and Conditions – by Angela Sormani
7. Eight Steps To Mastering Small Company Acquisitions – by Ben Smith
8. The Uniforms of Silicon Valley, a Slideshow (subscribers only) – by Connie Loizos
9. Quien Es Mas Macho? A Slideshow of the Top 5 U.S. PE Funds this Year (subscribers only) – by Luisa Beltran
10. Moody’s: Most Bubble-era LBOs Struggle, while Dollar General, HCA Shine – by Luisa Beltran

Many bubble-era LBOs have turned in poor performances, according to a report from Moody’s Investors Service.

Moody’s looked at 40 LBOs from 2006 to early 2008, the go-go days for buyouts. While a majority of the companies have seen their financial leverage drop, earnings and revenue growth for most have been “significantly below” projections, Moody’s said.

Exits for the bubble group have also been rare. In fact, most are still owned by their PE owners, the report said. Seven have completed IPOs and only one target has been sold (that’s Alltel. Verizon Wireless acquired Alltel in 2009; it had been owned by TPG and Goldman Sachs PE unit). Only five of the companies have paid “material dividends,” while three companies–Chrysler, Aleris International and Station Casinos– have filed for bankruptcy, Moody’s said.

PE’s Jake & Elwood: What won’t the Gores boys try and buy into?

Drill, Baby! OPEC says greater oil output needed

Dollar General: Shares take a slide, but 247wallst.com argues for why investors (and, PE buyers) want to take a second look at the discount champ

Thank Goodness! Shares get a boost before jobs data

(Reuters) – Dollar General Corp (DG.N) posted a higher-than-expected quarterly profit as it attracted bargain-seeking consumers who spent more per visit, and the discount retailer raised its profit outlook. In a statement, Chief Executive Rick Dreiling said Dollar General’s sales momentum continued to build as the quarter progressed and said he was “encouraged” with the [...]

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Dollar General Corp (DG.N) on Wednesday priced 26 million shares at $27 each in a secondary public offering that allowed certain shareholders to sell their stock, the company said in a statement. Private equity firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co owned 88 percent of Dollar General’s shares following the company’s public [...]

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Discounter Dollar General Corp’s (DG.N) reported a quarterly profit on Thursday as the retailer benefited from higher customer traffic from bargain-seeking shoppers, sending shares up in premarket trading. Dollar General, which prices most its merchandise for below $10, said profit in its fiscal third quarter ended Oct. 30 was $75.6 million, [...]

Back in August, there was lots of talk about whether or not the public markets would accept a highly-leveraged IPO candidate like Avago Technologies. We then heard it again last week as Dollar General prepped its own offering.

Avago did better than Dollar General in terms of its actual IPO pricing, but both companies have traded higher in the aftermarket. So have other leveraged companies like Vitamin Shoppe, Talecris Biotherapeutics and STR Holdings. Overall, PE-backed companies with hefty leverage closed trading yesterday up 6.65% from where their IPOs priced. The only two exceptions this year are RailAmerica (which has tanked) and Emdeon (which is down just a fraction of a percent).

It’s certainly reasonable to argue that many of these companies would trade even higher were they to have lighter balance sheets, but not that high leverage leads to doomed public offerings. This was the topic of my weekly video segment with Reuters, which you can watch after the jump…

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Discount retailer Dollar General Corp (DG.N) priced shares in its initial public offering at $21 each, at the low end of expectations, in the latest effort by a private equity firm to unload a portfolio company in a market that has become unreceptive to such deals. Dollar General, which is almost [...]

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Dollar General (DG.N) is set to go public next week, but the discount retailer could see mixed results in its closely watched initial public offering as its private equity backers have valued the company richly. The $750 million offering of the retailer controlled by private equity firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & [...]

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co’s discount retailer Dollar General Corp (DG.N) set the terms of its initial public offering on Friday, in a sign that the $750 million offering could price by mid-November. In an updated prospectus filed on Friday with U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Dollar General said it planned [...]