(Reuters) – U.S. private equity firm the Carlyle Group [CYL.UL] plans to announce two or three deals soon in Brazil, Latin America’s largest economy, co-founder David Rubenstein said on Wednesday. The deals may be in the $100 million range, he said on the sidelines of an industry conference in Brazil’s financial capital Sao Paulo. (Reporting […]
The Odd Story of A Self-Important Dad: AKA Skip McGee III, the former head of investment banking at Lehman Brothers. He's written a ridiculous letter to his kid's school and Dealbreaker got wind of it... (Dealbreaker) PE Salary Freeze! Roughly six in 10 private-equity firms have frozen salaries or are considering doing so in the future. (Deal Journal) Speaking of PE HR: Clusterstock has a take of the grueling process to get hired at a buyout firm. But frankly, as I read it, I had to agree with some of the commenters-the process seems pretty standard. If you can't describe and model an LBO, why are you applying to work at a buyout firm? (Clusterstock) PR Problem: Following the Goldman Sachs' take-down in Rolling Stone earlier this year, Vanity Fair has a new profile of the firm and its not necessarily flattering. (Vanity Fair) And: Deal Journal piles on, writing that the "PR hits keep coming." (DJ)
GTCR Golder Rauner has agreed to buy BIT Systems Inc., a company that designs software for the government intelligence agencies, Buyouts magazine reported.
LONDON (Reuters) – Travel reservations giant Amadeus is asking lenders to amend its 5.21 billion-euro ($7.83 billion) loan as it prepares for an initial public share offer, two sources close to the deal said on Tuesday. The Madrid-headquartered company — which hired Goldman Sachs (GS.N), JP Morgan (JPM.N) and Morgan Stanley (MS.N) in October for […]
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Morgan Stanley (MS.N) has shortlisted bidders including five U.S. private-equity firms and Taiwan's Fubon Financial Holding Co Ltd (2881.TW) in the sale of its stake in China International Capital Corp, the Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday, citing people familiar with the situation. Bain Capital LLC, Carlyle Group, General Atlantic LLC, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co (KKR.AS) and TPG Capital made the list of bidders whose first-round indicative offers for Morgan Stanley's 34.3 percent stake were considered attractive enough to be allowed to conduct due diligence on the Chinese investment bank, the paper said. One strategic buyer -- Taiwan's Fubon Financial -- was also selected to conduct due diligence, the paper said.
On its website, private equity firm Olympus Partners used to boast about how it had "never executed a leveraged recapitalization of an existing portfolio company." You won't find that claim there today, however, after the firm announced a $110 million leveraged recap of Taco Bell franchisee K-Mac Enterprises Inc. The deal included a $59 million dividend for existing shareholders (i.e., Olympus), $2.7 million in bonuses to 25 K-Mac employees and a bunch of left over working capital that K-Mac can use to buy and build new restaurants. So what happened? "The company had leverage of less than 1x EBITDA before the recap, which wasn't sensible from a tax perspective" explains Rob Morris, managing partner of Olympus. "We increased leverage by doing the recap, but it's effectively less than it was after the original deal -- 2.5x versus 3.5x -- which is also a heck of a lot less leverage than your typical LBO and is a much more efficient balance sheet than no debt at all."
LONDON (Reuters) – Informa Plc, the British media group, ended talks to buy Springer Science + Business Media, saying it could not do a deal in the time frame required by the debt-laden firm’s private equity owners. The withdrawal of the Lloyd’s List publisher, days after it confirmed it was considering a takeover of Springer, […]
Fewer deals, more dollars. That's the gist of November data provided by Thomson Reuters, which shows that a decrease in global deal volume was counteracted by an increase in aggregate disclosed values. Global M&A hit $244 billion in disclosed value for 2,809 transactions, compared to $154 billion for 3,295 deals in October. November 2008 volume was $112 billion for 3,074 deals. Private equity firms announced 164 deals last month, compared to 217 in October and 221 in November 2008. Disclosed deal values, however, rose from $17.6 billion in October to $18.08 billion in November. Download the spreadsheet by clicking here.
LONDON (Reuters) – Montagu Private Equity has ended exclusive talks about selling Survitec to rival Permira, leaving Warburg Pincus frontrunner to buy the maker of life rafts and life jackets, people familiar with the matter said. The latest twist in a sale that has been in the works since at least March highlights the continuing […]
Halfway through the year and we had triple digits in our sights. But an improving economy and flexible lenders may keep keep the PE-backed bankruptcy list from topping 100. In the month of November, saw just five bankrupt portfolio companies, a slight drop from October's . We've long crossed last year's total of 49, but unless things really fall apart in December, we're not going to double that number. Newcomers to the list of money-losers include Wind Point Partners, MatlinPatterson,Genstar, MSouth Equity Partners, and Sterling Group. We also added THL Partners' storied investment in Simmons, which finally found its way into the restructuring courts. That, as we all know thanks to extensive coverage by the New York Times, isn't actually a money-losing deal. But it is THL's second bankruptcy this year; the firm last month lost its investment in Nortek. Bruckmann Rosser also joins the two-timer list with its bankruptcy of Lazy Days RV. Earlier this year the firm saw its tomato company Eurofresh collapse into bankruptcy.