Q3 Data: Buyout Drop-Off Muted

Buyout pros will look back on Q3 with the type of animus usually reserved for an infectious disease or termite infestation. But they’ll have to write down their qualitative anecdotes, as the historical data won’t look too bad.

Buyouts Magazine today published deal closure and fund-raising data for Q3, which shows that the past three months weren’t all that different from the April-May stretch. U.S.-based LBO firms and their portfolio companies (which can be headquartered anywhere) closed 252 control-stake transactions in Q3, with disclosed values for 82 deals of more than $106 billion. That represents a 12% increase in disclosed deal volume over Q2, although the number of closed deals dropped buy approximately 16.56 percent. That brings the 2007 total to 837 consummated deals with a disclosed value of $304 billion. For contrast, the first three quarters of 2006 had 770 deals with $181 billion in disclosed value.

Buyout fund-raising also remained fairly steady in Q3, with $74 billion raised by U.S.-based firms. That’s basically even with the $74.3 billion raised in Q2, and brings the 2007 tally to $214.8 billion. There have been 275 domestic buyout funds in market this year, with 123 of them having targets of less than $500 million. Another 76 have targeted between $501 million and $3 billion, with the other 36 going for mega status.

Buyouts Magazine subscribers can get much more in-depth info, charts, etc. at www.BuyoutsNews.com. Non-subscribers… Well, non-subscribers can become subscribers.