Private Equity
2 min read · 24 January 2011
2 min read · 19 January 2011
Shameless plug: Our sister Web site, buyoutsnews.com, is announcing its eleventh annual Deal Of The Year Awards. The deadline for nominations is Friday, Feb. 25. Buyouts Deal Of The Year Awards, to be published in Buyouts Magazine in the spring, will honor exceptional majority-stake transactions closed in 2010. This year, like the last two, we're focusing the contest on exits, to ensure we are recognizing the industry's most successful transactions over the life cycle of the holding. For complete details, download the pdf.
1 min read · 19 January 2011
Castle Creek Capital LLC has wrapped fundraising on its fourth fund, a $331.1 million pool that the firm has earmarked to make non-control investments in troubled community banks. After more than 22 months of fundraising—its first sale was in March 2009—the firm was well short of the $500 target that it reported in a regulatory filing, according to our sister site, Buyouts. Castle Creek, of Rancho Santa Fe, Calif., specializes in recapitalization, growth equity, and buyout investments in U.S.-based community banks with assets of less than $10 billion. It has seven properties in the Fund IV portfolio so far—three publicly traded bank holding companies, three private ones, and a shelf charter for future acquisitions. Buyouts subscribers can read more here.
1 min read · 10 January 2011
Interesting, isn't it, how LBO sponsors may put widely varying values on the companies they take private? The New York Times had an interesting exercise in its business section today to compare and contrast the valuations that different buyout firms put on some of their portfolio holdings. One example is the Texas electric utility Energy Future Holdings Corp., owned by buyout firms including Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co., TPG Capital and Goldman Sachs. The company was taken private in 2007 in a deal valued at $48 billion—the largest in the history of private equity. K.K.R. now values its investment at 20 cents on the dollar; TPG values its stake at twice that, 40 cents. That gap represents a difference of nearly $1.7 billion in the value of each firm’s equity stake. It almost makes you wonder if these sponsors were looking at the same company.
3 min read · 05 January 2011
3 min read · 03 January 2011
2 min read · 29 December 2010
At the end of 2009, Reuters Buyouts sought to answer whether primary fundraising would suffer as a result of secondary market investments in its "Secondary Market Threatens To Use Up All The Oxygen" piece. It didn't work out that way. During the credit crisis, limited partners faced few capital calls, and if anything, secondary sales froze up along with markets everywhere. But as secondary sales become increasingly common, the prospect of future fundraisings being impacted grew. I got to thinking about this after New York secondaries firm Lexington Partners Inc. announced a deal Wednesday to buy a PE portfolio worth £470 million ($730 million) from Lloyds Banking Group.
3 min read · 16 December 2010
2 min read · 14 December 2010
Taking advantage of a strengthening stock market and a lending market where many borrowers struggle to find financing, several business development companies (BDCs) are taking steps to fortify their financial positions. BDCs are closed-end investment funds that are publicly traded on stock exchanges. Designed to provide capital to privately owned businesses, they can provide both equity and debt financing. Healthier BDCs, led by Ares Capital Corp., are issuing stock and reducing their debt, while other such lenders, including American Capital Ltd., are taking other steps to shore up their capital positions.
3 min read · 14 December 2010
