NEW YORK (Reuters) – Ancestry.com Inc (ACOM.O), a website backed by Spectrum Equity Investors, rose in its initial public offering debut on Thursday. The company priced the 7.4 million shares at $13.50 per share on Wednesday, within an expected range. Ancestry.com, which operates a website that allows people to trace their family roots by scouring […]
Moody's today released a study on the performance of debt on 86 bubble-era mega-deals. Guess what? Just like the crap-performing mega-deals of bubbles past, their debt doesn't look so hot. As Henry Kravis would say, that's just the nature of the beast. peHUB has obtained permission to post the entire study, called $640 Billion & 640 Days Later. Download it below. Of course, any study on private equity performance from ratings agencies takes a necessarily narrow view of the situation. It focuses on on company debt, which looks bad, but doesn't reflect the performance of the overall investment. As my colleague Megan Davies pointed out this morning, the investment can be a success regardless of the company's debt level. In fact, many of the companies which Moody's classifies as "defaulted" only earn that title because they've done a debt-for-equity swap. Lenders usually take a hit on those deals, but the company typically remains unscathed, not to mention, it preserves a buyout fund's investment.
TPG Capital and the Canada Pension Plan have agreed to buy IMS Health (NYSE: RX), a provider of data on prescription drug sales, for $22 per share (50% premium to last Friday's closing price). The total deal would be valued at around $5.2 billion, including the assumption of debt. Goldman Sachs is providing the leveraged finance.
MELBOURNE(Reuters) – Australian toll road operator Transurban Group (TCL.AX) rejected a takeover approach from two Canadian pension funds on Thursday, but left the door open to a better offer, sending its shares up 20 percent. The move marks the latest swoop on an Australian infrastructure group by Canada’s pension funds, taking advantage of beaten-down share […]
Panolam Industries, a Shelton, Conn.-based decorative laminate company, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, as part of a previously announced debt restructuring agreement with lenders led by Apollo Capital Management and Eaton Vance Management. Genstar Capital and Sterling Group bought Panolam for $345 million in 2005.
Quantum Energy Partners has formed Icon NGS LLC, a Houston-based acquisition platform focused on natural gas storage. The deal is being done in partnership with gas storage veterans Larry Bickle, Andy Lang and Mark Fullerton. No financial terms were disclosed.
Siguler Guff has acquired a minority equity stake in MDM Bank, one of Russia's largest private banks, for an undisclosed amount. Brunel Capital served as broker. MDM was formed this past August via the merger of URSA Bank and MDM-Bank.
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Spectrum Equity Investors-backed website Ancestry.com Inc (ACOM.O) priced its initial public offering of 7.4 million shares at $13.50 per share on Wednesday, within the expected range. Ancestry.com, which operates a website that allows people to trace their family roots by scouring online records, will begin trading on Nasdaq under the symbol […]
FRANKFURT (Reuters) – VEM, the owner of German generic drugmaker Ratiopharm, said it was satisfied with the first-round offers received for the forced sale of the unit, indicating that bidding could turn competitive. A spokesman for the Merckle family investment vehicle VEM said on Thursday it was positively surprised by the number of bids, which […]
NEW YORK, Nov 5 (Reuters) – Leveraged buyouts struck by Cerberus Capital and Apollo Management performing worse than deals by other private equity firms such as Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co., a report by Moody’s said on Thursday. Moreover, mega-deals have fared badly on average, said the report, which studied 186 deals structured during the […]