Dan Primack

While the Department of Justice continues its primer course on private equity, some individual shareholders are taking action against perceived abuses. Three people have filed what they hope to be a class-action lawsuit against 13 private equity firms, for allegedly violating federal antitrust laws. The plaintiffs are/were shareholders in such companies as HCA, Harrah’s and […]

KPS Special Situations Fund just announced that it is selling steel casting company AmeriCast Technologies to Castle Harlan for $110 million. Not earth-shaking news in and of itself, except that it represents KPS’ fourth exit in the past five business days. I have never seen anything quite like it, either in the buyout or venture capital […]

Last month, Ben Stein wrote in the New York Times that management buyouts of public companies should be outlawed. Pretty surprising for a free-market Republican who made his bones in the Nixon White House, before becoming an economic pundit, actor, game show host and economic pundit (again). So surprising, in fact, that some bloggers wondered […]

I’m tentatively scheduled to be on CNBC’s Closing Bell at 3:30 this afternoon, to discuss a variety of possible public-to-private buyouts. Expect discussion of such companies as Clear Channel, Tribune and (it’s back) Ford Motor Co. Expect me to say yes, why and no. 4:10pm Update: Ummm…. Not quite the topics you were expecting? Me […]

Welcome to a new feature here at peHUB, even though “new” is about as self-obvious as “horrifying” when referring to a Doc Rivers coaching decision. Each Friday, I’ll select a Deal of the Week from the preceding five days. The only consistency I can promise is a total lack of it. This is subjective, not […]

Think you’re adventurous because you invest in China or India? Have some courage. Invest in Libya. That’s right, I said Libya – the country best known to Americans as the homeland of Muammar Qaddafi and those VW van drivers who tried to kill Doc Brown. Seems times have changed (except for the part about Qaddafi […]

Silver Lake Partners and Shah Capital Partners are teaming up to raise a new fund focused on middle-market technology companies. Formal marketing is expected to begin in Q1 2007, with a target capitalization of between $750 million and $1.5 billion. Some market watchers had thought that Silver Lake would not launch the middle-market fund until […]

Optasite Inc., a Westborough, Mass.-based cellular tower company, today announced that it has secured a $150 million credit facility from Morgan Stanley. This brings the company’s total private capitalization to over a quarter-billion dollars (including $65m of pure VC funding). So let’s play Five Questions with company CEO Jim Eisenstein, whose past gigs include CEO […]

VenturePAC, a political action committee managed by the National Venture Capital Association, is one of most bi-partisan business PACs in Washington – which is to say that it only gives about two-third of its money to Republican Party candidates. This means that its post-election wounds aren’t life-threatening, but they sure are noticeable. According to data […]

Until quite recently, conventional wisdom was that the best buyout bang came from middle-market bucks. Part of the rationale was that middle-market firms used to get more proprietary dealflow than did their bigger brothers, but the primary justification was found in fund returns data. Unfortunately, much of that data mistakenly used modern standards to determine fund […]