PE Deals

I’ll be on CNBC tomorrow morning at 7:40am to discuss the Toys ‘R’ U buyout, one year later. Lots of debt, lots of real estate and lots of Barbie Dolls… Got any thoughts, be sure to let me know.

With all the mega-LBO activity of late, it’s sometimes easy to forget that the most transactional action remains in the middle-markets (redefined as deals between $50 million and $1 billion). So let’s play 5 Questions with Randal Stephenson, head of middle-market M&A at CIT Group:  1. Private equity deals are making up an ever-larger piece […]

I was on CNBC earlier this morning to discuss possible buyouts of newspaper companies. For the uninitiated, both Tribune Co. and Trinity Mirror are on the block, while various folks have expressed interest in buying the New York Times and/or its Boston Globe subsidiary. My basic point was that these are basically vanity plays – […]

It seems that ludicrous/lucrative transaction and management fees aren’t all that HCA disclosed in the 8-K form it filed last Friday with the SEC. Check out this passage that reader Zach noticed on page 12 (the bolding is mine): “In each of the employment agreements with the Executives (exclusive of Robert A. Waterman), the Company also commits to […]

Roark Capital Group of Atlanta recently acquired Schlotzsky’s Inc., an Austin, Texas-based sandwich shop chain with around $210 million in annual revenue. The deal was officially made by Roark-controlled Focus Brands, and is just the latest in a long line of restaurant industry deals this year. So let’s play Five Questions with Neal Aronson, managing […]

In 2001, the Boston Red Sox hiked ticket prices just 24 hours after the New England Patriots had won their first Super Bowl. It was an egregious increase, but no one noticed. People also don’t notice much on the day after Thanksgiving, because they either are suffering tryptophan hangovers or are in pre-stampede mode at […]

Bain Capital is running out of money. Of course, that’s a bit like saying that an ATM machine is running out of money: Rest assured that someone will show up in the morning to fill ‘er back up. The Boston-based firm had raised $10 billion this past spring, including an $8 billion general fund and […]

Andrew Ross Sorkin of NY Times Dealbook has developed some middle ground between Ben Stein’s call for banning management buyouts and the private equity market’s calls for continued regulatory indifference. Specifically, he has a four-part plan for fixing certain problems inherent in management buyouts. It goes like this: 1. Require that a majority of minority shareholders approve the […]

It’s now been two days since a few disgruntled shareholders filed what they hope will become a class-action lawsuit against 13 top private equity firms. I hope that it doesn’t. To be clear, I am not an apologist for private equity firms. I think many of them charge unfair transaction fees to their limited partners, and […]

During the White House Correspondents Dinner earlier this year, emcee Steven Colbert said of President Bush: “He believes on Wednesday exactly what he believed on Monday, regardless of what happened on Tuesday.” Kind of reminds me of what I keep seeing on the private equity beat. The first example came last month, when Sevin Rosen […]