Private equity firm Silver Lake Partners bid as low as $11.22 per share for Dell in mid 2012, when it first discussed a buyout with founder and CEO Michael Dell, writes Reuters. Since then Silver Lake and Michael Dell raised their bid to take the business private to $13.65 a share. At $24.4 billion, it would be the largest private equity-led buyout since the 2008 financial crisis, writes Reuters.
3 min read · 18 March 2013
Silicon Valley venture capitalist Vinod Khosla has stepped into the middle of a long-standing controversy over a California tradition: open access to the state's famed beaches.
4 min read · 15 March 2013
Packaged foods maker Pinnacle Foods Inc., backed by Blackstone Group LP, said it expects to raise as much as $667 million from its initial public offering, Reuters reported. The owner of the popular Bird Eye and Duncan Hines brands said in a regulatory filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that it plans to sell 29 million shares at between $18 and $20 each. At the top end of the range, Pinnacle Foods would be valued at about $2.3 billion.
2 min read · 15 March 2013
Billionaire Phil Anschutz took his Los Angeles-based sports, music and arena conglomerate off the market because he felt reinvigorated after back surgery and didn't like "the noise" surrounding the sale, Reuters reported. Anschutz announced the end of the heavily watched sale process on Thursday despite multibillion-dollar offers that the 73-year-old Denver dealmaker said might have led to successful negotiations for the privately-held company, AEG. It had drawn second-round bids by Colony Capital, Guggenheim Partners and Los Angeles biotech billionaire Patrick Soon-Shiong, people familiar with the deal process told Reuters.
3 min read · 15 March 2013
DirecTV, the largest U.S. satellite television provider has decided to end its pursuit of Vivendi's GVT, complicating the sale of the Brazilian telecommunications operator, Reuters reported. A DirecTV spokesman confirmed on Thursday that the company chose to "not to move forward in its pursuit of GVT and has withdrawn from the process." The move is a major setback for Vivendi because it removes the only strategic buyer from the bidding. According to two people familiar with the group's thinking, the sale has been put on hold. The other bidder was a consortium of private equity groups led by KKR that offered a lower price than DirecTV, Reuters previously reported.
2 min read · 15 March 2013
The founders of Carlyle Group LP received $57.6 million each in dividends from their stake in the private equity firm and executive pay in 2012, a regulatory filing showed on Thursday, down from $137.8 million in 2011. David Rubenstein, William Conway and Daniel D'Aniello, who founded Washington, D.C.-based Carlyle in 1987 and are now in their sixties, each forfeited a bonus of around $3.5 million they received in previous years. Yet most of their profits come from their ownership of the firm. They received $57.3 million each from their individual 15.4 percent stakes in Carlyle. They each also received $281,250 in executive compensation.
2 min read · 15 March 2013
Silver Lake Partners, the technology-focused private equity firm backing a $24.4 billion bid to take Dell Inc private, is close to raising $10 billion for its latest fund, exceeding its initial fundraising target on strong investor demand, a person familiar with the matter said on Thursday.
3 min read · 15 March 2013
A federal judge narrowed a closely watched lawsuit accusing some of the world's largest private equity firms of colluding to drive down prices on companies they sought to buy, costing shareholders of the acquired businesses billions of dollars, Reuters reported. Despite letting part of the main claim go forward, U.S. District Judge Edward Harrington in Boston dealt the plaintiffs a significant setback in finding they fell short of showing an "overarching" conspiracy to drive down prices on takeovers valued at roughly a quarter trillion dollars. The civil antitrust lawsuit was brought in 2007 against 11 defendants, including prominent private equity firms such as Bain Capital Partners LLC, Blackstone Group LP, Carlyle Group LP, Goldman Sachs Group Inc's private equity arm, KKR & Co and TPG Capital Management LP.
4 min read · 14 March 2013
European private equity firm Cinven said on Thursday it had raised 5 billion euros ($6.5 billion) for its latest buyout fund. The Fifth European Buyout Fund is already 14 percent committed, it said in a statement, following investments last year including healthcare firms Mercury Pharma and Amdipharm.
1 min read · 14 March 2013
Private equity firm TPG Capital has purchased the highly sought after assets of Australian poultry firm Ingham Enterprises, Bob Ingham confirmed in a statement, writes Reuters. Ingham wouldn't confirm the deal valued Australia's largest poultry producer at around A$1 billion ($1.02 billion) and that TPG paid more than A$850 million, including a small cash earn-out, as reported by the Australian newspaper.
2 min read · 14 March 2013
