Dan Primack

AEA Investors has agreed to acquire Shoes for Crews, a West Palm Beach, Fla.-based maker of slip resistant footwear for restaurant workers. Sellers include Advent International, which acquired a minority stake in 2004. We first reported on the deal back in April, when ten prospective buyers had submitted bids in excess of $250 million. That type of pricing would have produced a 7x or 8x EBITDA multiple for Advent, which invested $30 million as part of a larger recap -- including $32 million in senior debt -- at an enterprise value of around $120 million. AEA's auction victory was first disclosed in an FTC filing, and the firm has not yet responded to messages left by peHUB. Advent declined to comment.

Quick hit: There’s a WSJ report this morning that The Blackstone Group is expected to bid for private equity giant AlpInvest, which is being shopped by its Dutch pension fund owners. The second part is accurate (the part about being shopped), but multiple sources tell me that Blackstone has no plans to make an offer...

The Carlyle Group has become the year’s leading acquiror, according to new data sent over this morning by Thomson Reuters (publisher of peHUB). Seems the $3.9 billion agreement to acquire nutritional supplement manufacturer NBTY Inc. put the Washington D.C.-based buyout firm over the top, with $6.9 billion worth of 2010 deals. TPG Capital ranks second […]

My corporate overlords have quietly signed an agreement with Hamilton Lane, to improve the quality of their private equity benchmarking data. This is a very welcome development, as the sample pools have been a bit shallow of late. The deal is basically that Hamilton Lane will lean on its GPs to voluntarily provide data, first via letters and then via phone calls. The consultant considered doing something like this a few years back with S&P, but it didn’t work out. It then considered going solo, but decided that Thomson Reuters had a good mousetrap that needed to be bulked up.

Steve Glick has stepped down as a principal with Lineage Capital, peHUB has learned. He plans to join the middle-markets group of Sankaty Advisors. www.sankaty.com

Well, it’s official: KKR is listed on the New York Stock Exchange, and was up nearly 1% in early trading. Guess this means we’re in for a slew of Blackstone vs. KKR stories at the end of each quarter (and I’ll probably write half of them)… Those who buy KKR shares expect to be taking indrect part of big-dollar leveraged buyouts, but now it seems they also might be getting a piece of smaller deals. The firm recently sent out books for the KKR China Growth Fund, which will write equity checks of between $35 million and $75 million for companies in Mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. This is different than the $4 billion KKR Asian Fund, raised in 2007 and primarily focused on big buyouts throughout Asia (China, Japan, India, Australia, Korea, etc.).

Expect a slew of KKR stories in the general biz press over the next 24 hours, as the buyout behemoth transfers its listing from Amsterdam to New York. Most of them will probably focus on what the move signals about the private equity market. Let me save you some time: Nothing. That said, two things to watch:

The Florida State Board of Administration has agreed to acquire a minority ownership stake in Lexington Partners, peHUB has learned. It is believed to be the first time that a state pension fund outside of California has bought into a private equity firm's management company. "Florida has had a multi-pronged relationship with Lexington for a long time, so from that perspective it's not to surprising," explained a source familiar with the deal. "But when you consider how poorly most other deals like this have performed, it's got to make you wonder why Florida would want to double-down on a single firm." Neither Lexington nor Florida is commenting on the deal, but our understanding is that the deal is for a 9.9% ownership position at an enterprise value of around $1.8 billion (consider that last figure to be ballpark -- a very spacious ballpark).

Last month, we reported that Eric Cohen had stepped down as a managing partner of WHI Capital. The news was confirmed by Adam Schecter, the firm's founder and remaining managing partner. Now we've learned that Schecter is also gone, effective June 30. No explanation has been given for either departure by WHI, a Chicago-based buyout firm focused on niche manufacturing, distribution and specialty service companies. Schecter's voicemail, however, indicates that he has joined Geneva Glen Capital, a new private equity firm formed by Jeff Gonyo (ex-Wind Point Partners). It's unclear if Cohen also is joining Geneva Glen. I've left messages for both Schecter and Gonyo, and will update this post if they reply. As for the future of WHI, I spoke briefly via phone with Mike Schopin, one of three investment professionals still listed on the WHI firm's website. He said that WHI Capital still has dry powder from its $170 million fund raised in 2006, plus some additional commitments from sole sponsor William Harris Investors (family-based asset management firm).

MergerMarket today released Latin American M&A activity for the first half of 2010, which it says booked record deal volume. Download the report here (.pdf).