Today’s most risqué PE profile goes to the WSJ’s story on Lynn Tilton, the founder and CEO of Patriarch Partners.

Tilton, according to the story, has “platinum blond hair, tight leather skirts and a penchant for racy remarks.” Behind Tilton’s glam facade is a sophisticated distressed debt investor and manufacturing tycoon who has become one of the richest self-made women in America. She heads Patriarch, a New York PE firm, and “owns all or part of 74 companies with revenues of more than $8 billion and 120,000 employees,” the WSJ says.

Patriarch Partners Management Group LLC named Charles Sweet, a managing director at the firm, as interim CEO of NetVersant Solutions. Patriarch Partners is a majority shareholder of the provider of technology solutions. Sweets replaced Rob Macchi.

Earlier this month, Forbes came out with its list of top 100 most powerful women and I was shocked that no female PE exec made the list. Now, I may have a contender.

Lynn Tilton has built Patriarch Partners into a force in middle market distressed investing, according to TheDeal.com. Tilton is CEO and sole principal of the firm, which manages around $7 billion of equity and secured loan assets. The firm has control positions in more than two-thirds of its 74 portfolio companies.

Patriarch Partners announced Thursday some management changes to its automotive platform, which includes DURA Automotive Systems and Global Automotive Systems. Tim Leuliette is no longer MD of the platform and is stepping down as CEO of DURA. He will be replaced by Jeff Stafeil, who was CFO of DURA. Tom Chambers, DURA’s COO, was made an MD of the platform. Martin Becker, EVP and GM of DURA’s control systems division, will become COO of DURA and replace Chambers. Jim Gregory becomes EVP and CFO of DURA, replacing Stafeil. Gregory was VP and CFO of Globla Automotive Systems. Patriarch Partners, of New York, is a PE firm.

DETROIT (Reuters) – Private equity firm Patriarch Partners has agreed to take a controlling stake in U.S. auto parts supplier Dura Automotive Systems by investing up to $125 million of capital, the investment company said on Friday. Patriarch Partners, which has built a $7 billion investment house by acquiring distressed companies, said it plans to [...]

Why spend time wrestling money away from tight-fisted investors when you’re sitting on a pile of your own cash? Lynn Tilton, CEO of distressed investment firm Patriarch Partners, plans to invest a significant amount of her own “Lynn Tilton dollars” into a new bank holding company project, she said at today’s Reuters Distressed Summit.

The project will take precedent over any fundraising efforts by Patriarch Partners, she said. In June, Tilton told peHUB that the firm’s latest fund, Zohar III, was 80% deployed, and that she would likely come to market with a new effort in September. Zohar III is a $1.25 billion pool which closed in 2007.

Lynn Tilton is on a mission. Each day the founder of distressed buyout firm Patriarch Partners hears from more than 20 worthy middle market companies in need of rescue financing.

The high volume is due, in part, to the lack of access to capital for middle market companies. They are too small to qualify for money from government plan TARP, and traditional sources of capital for middle market companies have retreated from the market to lick their wounds.

Tilton has a solution to the middle market capital drought which involves using money allocated for PPIP alongside cash from private investors. She’s proposed the plan, called SME Rescue Loans Program, to the Treasury and White House in a white paper (posted below). I spoke with her about the plan’s terms, incentives, and status.

PPIP hasn’t exactly gotten off the ground. Why will this plan be more attractive to investors than PPIP, particularly since it gives the first loss to private investors?

The reason PPIP hasn’t gotten off the ground is not because it hasn’t been attractive to investors. The problem is that you’re not getting banks to sell their mortgage assets because they’ve been given TALF, and so they’ve been able to take themselves out of the mess they were in. They’re not looking to sell their mortgage assets at a discount.

Howard Yellen has joined Patriarch Partners as an executive vice president, and head of a newly-formed Defence and Intragency platform. Yellen is a retired brigadier general and previously was VP of business development for L-3 Communications.

Lynn Tilton of Patriarch Partners has been all over the news lately. Her distressed buyout firm recently gave up on a battle to purchase Polaroid, bought the assets of Stila Cosmetics and became embroiled in a conflict over the shares of AriZona Iced Tea.

Today Patriarch purchased Spiegel Brands, an online and catalog retailer selling apparel under the Spiegel, Newport News and Shape fx brands. The deal’s timing is uncanny, considering the company’s former sister business, Eddie Bauer, collapsed into bankruptcy just yesterday. Tilton said Patriarch isn’t likely to place a rival stalking horse bid on Eddie Bauer, which has agreed to be acquired by CCMP Capital for $202 million, because it’s too retail-oriented for the firm’s taste.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Three Japanese companies filed an involuntary bankruptcy petition against trendy cosmetics company Stila Corp in a Delaware court, saying it failed to pay its debts, according to court documents.

The creditors listed in the filings made on Wednesday are cosmetics makers Tokiwa Corporation, JO Cosmetics Co and Nihon Kolmar Co, all based in Japan. Together they list claims for sale of goods totaling $812,448.

Stila, which has a cult following for its trendy lipgloss and eyeshadow products, is owned by private equity firm Patriarch Partners. It was once owned by Estee Lauder (EL.N) and was sold to Sun Capital in 2006, which sold it to Patriarch this year.