The Mega-Deals Look Like Crap. Tell Us Something We Don't Know
Moody's today released a study on the performance of debt on 86 bubble-era mega-deals. Guess what? Just like the crap-performing mega-deals of bubbles past, their debt doesn't look so hot. As Henry Kravis would say, that's just the nature of the beast. peHUB has obtained permission to post the entire study, called $640 Billion & 640 Days Later. Download it below. Of course, any study on private equity performance from ratings agencies takes a necessarily narrow view of the situation. It focuses on on company debt, which looks bad, but doesn't reflect the performance of the overall investment. As my colleague Megan Davies pointed out this morning, the investment can be a success regardless of the company's debt level. In fact, many of the companies which Moody's classifies as "defaulted" only earn that title because they've done a debt-for-equity swap. Lenders usually take a hit on those deals, but the company typically remains unscathed, not to mention, it preserves a buyout fund's investment.
