Private equity takes pains to avoid overpaying for Western companies - Reuters
Private equity fund managers, who have taken advantage of favorable Western capital markets to sell companies for top dollar, say they need to move beyond traditional buyouts to avoid overpaying for companies. Even after returning hundreds of billions of dollars to their fund investors in the last two years through asset sales, the private equity industry is still sitting on US$817.9 billion of investor money it can invest, the highest amount of "dry powder" since 2008, according to market research firm Preqin. This is despite dealmaking having picked up, with leveraged buyout volumes, including the debt of the companies acquired, reaching US$174.2 billion in 2013, up from US$136 billion in 2012 and the most since 2007, according to Thomson Reuters data.
