By the middle of the year, we were on pace to double last year’s number of LBO-backed busts. June’s LBO-backed bankruptcy list boasted 46 Chapter 11s; last year’s total was 49.

But then the pace slowed down, companies found ways to avoid the courts and the list finished the year with 74 total bankruptcies. That’s far more than 2008′s total (and blows 2007′s grand total of two out of the water), but it isn’t nearly as high as expected.

We can attribute the slowdown to a little thing called Amend & Extend (or, as Mark Patterson of MatlinPatterson called it, “Amend, Extend and Pretend”). Midway through the year, lenders realized they couldn’t be complete jerks about their loans if they didn’t want a tsunami of bankruptcy cases on their hands, so they relented, allowing sponsors and their companies to “kick the can down the road” (another buzzy phrase of the year) and extend debt maturities.

Whether or not that solution will prove to save all the overlevered companies out there has yet to be seen, but for 2009, it was a saving grace. Download the entire spreadsheet after the jump:

In 2008, credit froze up but we still had lots of leftover boom-era fun to ogle at. The first half of the year saw plenty of MAC drama from mega-buyouts gone bad, and the second half, well you know what happened then.

But in 2009 what did we get? Frozen credit, frozen deal-doing, frozen fundraising, a pile of never-ending pay-to-play crap, and an even bigger pile of hopeful, optimistic punditry. YAWN!

So here’s hoping 2010 will be rife with heated M&A auctions, warmer fundraising markets, IPOs-a-blazing, the end of pay-to-play, and realistic punditry. Cheers!

Capping off our year-end series, we asked PE pros for some reflections on 2009 and predictions for 2010. Here are some of their answers. For more year-end reflection, go here. To chime in, GPs can send responses here.

Nobody is picking up the phones today, so time for another dreaded top 10 list. This time, it’s the year’s most popular posts on peHUB.

We’ve excluded all the First Read and Second Opinion posts, and consider the multi-page VC Walking Dead to be a single story. No idea why the top post was the top post, or why it became a veritable meeting place for GE Capital employees (past and present). We’re just glad they chose peHUB to be their virtual dartboard.

Each of these posts typically sits behind the firewall (peHUB subscriptions make great stocking stuffers), but we’re pulling them out for a few days. Happy reminiscing…

While news reports are calling the “00s” anything from a lost decade to one to skip, to one without authority to just plain sucky.

For private equity, the aughts could not have been more exciting (that is, until around mid-2007). The industry ballooned in the face of low interest rates and lax lending, leading to record breaking dealmaking that won’t be matched for a very long time. Globally, the top ten buyout deals of all time occurred between 2006 and 2008. When they were struck, the buyout barons behind them were on top of the world (or, Masters of the Universe, if you prefer).

But of course, when the good times ended, private equity was not immune. The last two years have been a wake-up call for private equity, with writedowns and stalled fundraisings to prove it. Here’s a rundown of the ten largest deals of all time–which all occurred in this decade–and how they’ve fared in the interim.

When the final numbers come out next month, it’s likely that venture capitalists will have invested less money in 2009 than in any year since 1997. It’s currently tracking at just over $16 billion for U.S.-based companies, with the only silver lining — from a deal volume perspective — being that Q3 and Q4 figures were improvements over Q1 and Q2.

But the investment slowdown didn’t affect everyone. peHUB has compiled a list of the 10 companies that got the most VC love over the past year. It includes five cleantech companies (broadly-speaking), some social network-related plays, a biotech startup, a wireless networker and a private aviation company. Two of them have already filed for IPOs, while some of the others are considered prime candidates.

Get the full list after the jump…

Last year, the largest LBO list looked like a tallest midget contest. This year, it looks like a frat party. Yes, the top deals of 2009 were largely alcohol-fueled.

Beer giant AB Inbev spent the year scurrying to unload assets to meet a $7 billion payment on its debt this fall, a hangover from the $52 billion merger of Anheuser Busch and InBev in 2008. Buyout firms pounced at the opportunity, giving AB-Inbev divestitures three of the 10 spots.

The year’s largest deals included both an infrastructure and a real estate play. The largest deal of the year was, appropriately, a creditor takeover of bankrupt auto parts company.

But there was some encouraging action. TPG may even do what no one thought possible a year ago: a $5 billion LBO. A take-private, no less. That deal isn’t perfect and faces a few hurdles before closing (including its February shareholder vote), but the fact that the firm is going for it—financing in hand—is more than just a little encouraging.

Get the full list after the jump…

2009 is fast coming to an end, so we figured it was time to take a chronological look back at the year’s top private equity stories. Consider it a timeline of sorts (a venture capital one will be posted later this month).

Lots of scandals and failures, with a smattering of successes mixed in. Get it after the jump…

Yesterday we posted a list of the year’s five “false alarms,” or trends that were blown out of proportion in the last year. Things that everyone got excited about happening (for better or for worse) but never really happened. You know, things like LP defaults, the secondary market, and PE bank deals.

That’s not to say we weren’t surprised by a few things, for better or for worse. Here’s a slightly shorter list of what caught private equity off guard this year.

After the September 2008, no one knew what to expect in the upcoming week, let alone the next month or year. That uncertainty led to a lot of freaking out over nothing this year, and private equity had its fair share of false alarms. Here are five “trends” that had buyout barons shaking in their boots, but ended up being no big deal at all. (Literally! Get it? There were no big deals? Anywaaaaays…)

Good riddance, 2009. We’ve compiled 17 funny, smart or just plain delusional statements LBO pros made this year.

Get them after the jump…