Happy Monday! If you want to catch up on news you may have missed last week, here are peHUB’s top 10 posts, as judged by the pageviews of our regular readers. Hot topics included Q3 fundraising, performance data from Colorado PERA, UTIMCO and New York pension funds, and a growing number of restaurant bankruptcies.

ONE: Slideshow: 15 Largest U.S.-based Venture Funds Raised in Q3 – by Lawrence Aragon
TWO: CrunchFund Wasn’t the Only Newbie Fund Raised in Q3; Here Are 18 Others (slideshow) – by Lawrence Aragon
THREE: Slideshow: Top-Performing PE/VC Funds Of 3 Big-Apple Pensions – by David Toll
FOUR: Top Ten Performing Funds From The Colorado PERA Venture Portfolio (slideshow) – by Mark Boslet
FIVE: Qwikster and 7 Other Terrible, Short-Lived Ideas (slideshow) – by Connie Loizos
SIX: Slideshow: Riverside’s Lessons from the Loo – by Buyouts magazine
SEVEN: Slideshow: Restaurant Bankruptcies Make PE Queasy – by Bernard Vaughan
EIGHT: Slideshow: UTIMCO in 17 Active Funds with IRRs > 25% (subscribers only) – by Lawrence Aragon
NINE: Gores Group Turns More Industry-Focused (subscribers only) – by Bernard Vaughan
TEN: Welsh Carson To Buy Triple Point Tech from ABRY – by Luisa Beltran

Registering with regulators apparently isn’t a good thing.

Yesterday, we asked you whether buyout shops with $150 million or less in AUM should have to register with regulators. A resounding 72.5% — or more than two-thirds — voted “No.” Less than one-third, or 27.5%, believe smaller PE shops should have to register with the SEC.

A section of the Dodd-Frank Act has gotten PE firms in a tizzy.

Signed into law last summer, the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act requires that private equity firms with $150 million or more in capital register with the SEC no later than July 2011. Buyout shops are complaining that the new law will make it very expensive for small PE shops to comply. For example, Welsh Carson expects to spend $600,000 this year to comply with the rule.

The law also just makes life more complicated. Firms will have to file annual paperwork, develop compliance policies, keep tighter records and undergo examinations, among other obligations. PE firms will also likely have to hire personnel to deal with the new requirements.

HCA, the hospital operator with a massive debt load, is expected to price its IPO tonight (they’re offering 124 million shares at $27 to $30 each) and begin trading tomorrow. The $4.06 billion deal is expected to be the largest private equity backed offering EVER.

In honor of this colossal event, peHUB.com has a slideshow of the top 10 largest U.S. PE-backed IPOs. The data is supplied by Thomson Reuters.

I braved the pouring rain this morning to attend the Columbia Business School PE and VC conference.

Russell Carson, Welsh Carson’s co-founder, got my attention when he said he expected the Carlyle Group to go public “in the next year.” Carlyle, the politically connected buyout shop, has long been an IPO candidate, since arch rivals Blackstone, KKR and Fortress Group are all public.

Carson then kept up the entertaining pace when he talked about the movement to tax carried interest. Taxation, he said, is a small issue facing the industry. “At some point this will probably happen,” he said of the proposed increase to carried interest tax. “This just means that people like me will pay a higher tax rate.”

Gryphon Investors has gobbled up two companies as it builds a healthy snack platform.

San Francisco-based Gryphon on Monday said it had bought Ann’s House of Nuts and American Importing Co., or Amport. The acquisition of both companies is valued at $250 million, a source says. Both transactions closed Friday.

Columbia, Md.-based Ann’s House of Nuts makes private label and branded snack nut and trail mix products. Amport, of Minneapolis, makes and markets private label dried fruits. The companies will not be merged but will operate independently under one holding company, says Nick Orum, Gryphon’s president. They will cooperate on sales and marketing, he says.

Private Equity really likes Smile Brands, which last week announced a sale to Welsh Carson.

The deal, once it closes, will mark the third time a buyout shop has owned Smile Brands, which provides dental support services, facilities and equipment to dentists.

Last week, Welsh Carson said it was buying a majority stake in Smile Brands from Freeman Spogli & Co. Financial terms weren’t announced. Freeman Spogli bought Smile Brands from Gryphon Investors in 2005 for about $340 million. Gryphon, a San Francisco PE firm, acquired the company in 1998, when it was known as Bright Now! Dental.

Welsh Carson is expected to close the Smile Brands buy in December.

Bausch + Lomb, a portfolio company of Welsh Carson, has named three executives to management positions in its surgical business. Brad Paddock was hired as vice president of sales. Anthony Sine was appointed vice president of business development and Elisabeth Sandoval was named vice president of global marketing. Bausch is an eye care company from Aliso Viejo, Calif. New York-based Welsh Carson is a PE firm.

POST Integrations is the latest payment processor to go on the block with an unrealistic valuation, banking sources say.

Phoenix-based POST Integrations, which provides credit card processing services for hotels across the nation, has hired Citadel as its financial adviser. POST has about $20 million EBITDA and is seeking bids of 12x, according to three people with knowledge of the situation.

Mary Gerdts founded POST in 1991 and is currently the company’s CEO and president. POST’s customers include Hilton Hotels and Interstate Hotels.

LLR Partners is looking for growth from fertility clinics.

Over the summer, the Philadelphia PE firm acquired the Piney Point Surgery Center and Houston Fertility Laboratory which were both owned by Dr. Jimmy Gill and Dr. Gus Haddad. The doctors currently own The Houston Fertility Institute, which is their medical practice.

LLR used the two businesses to launch Vivere Health, a platform company that will be used to rollup other firms in the fertility space, says Joseph Cashia, Vivere’s CEO.