David Toll

With the pain of tax season receding, I though it would be a good time to break out some soothing tax-reduction strategies for 2008. Credit the following four tips to Stefan R. Boshkov, a partner at Nixon Peabody LLP, who has spent the last 30-odd years advising buyout firms, venture firms, hedge funds and others […]

“Free at last,” managers of taken-private companies might be tempted to shout. No more demands by Wall Street to meet quarterly earnings targets. No more tipping their hand to rivals through quarterly filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. And, blessedly, no more Sarbanes-Oxley. In reality, managers of buyout-backed companies soon encounter an even more […]

Many investors confronting the 35-page “risk factors” section of The Blackstone Group’s offering prospectus last spring surely had a ho-hum reaction. “Difficult market conditions … timing and receipt of carried interest … cash flow can be highly variable …” Yeah, yeah, right, right, whatever. Hadn’t the firm generated 23 percent net returns over the hill […]

Terms proposed by The Blackstone Group for its latest buyout fund remind limited partners how far they have come, and how far they have yet to go in fund negotiations. Blackstone has again proposed retaining 50% of net monitoring, transaction, director and related fee income, according to an investor who reviewed the terms. Over the years, […]

AEA Investors, the storied New York buyout shop that recently scored big on the sale of Burt’s Bees to Clorox, expects to wrap up its latest mid-market buyout fund later this quarter at $1.5 billion, according to a source close to the fund. The firm sits at the $1.3 billion mark on the partnership, which […]

Sponsoring business plan competitions has proven a great way for venture capital firms to do some good for graduate students, generate positive PR, and discover budding entrepreneurs. Now positive PR-starved LBO shops are discovering the virtues of such contests as well. This Friday, Knox Lawrence International LLC, a six-year-old buyout shop with close ties to […]

Whether portfolio companies owned by buyout shops create or destroy jobs has been the subject of much debate and research this year. If Congress and the president were convinced that buyout firms create jobs, and therefore do some good for their portfolio companies and the economy at large, they’d be less likely to tamper with […]

Covenant-lite loans, so instrumental in fueling the recent boom in take-privates and other mega-deals, have been pronounced dead. So what’s rising to take their place? On mega-deals, where covenant-lite loans had become most prevalent, it’s tough to say. That market has been just about shut down since the credit crunch started early this summer. But […]

Sometimes the tip of the iceberg looks fairly sizeable in its own right. Both Standard & Poor’s and Moody’s Investors Services have been issuing downgrades of buyout-backed companies at a rapid clip. Many of these downgrades, like that of Greatwide Logistics Services, a Dallas-based transportation and logistics company, take the companies deeper into speculative-grade territory. […]

With conditions becoming more favorable for a buyer’s market, attorneys and advisors say we may see more earn-outs negotiated in coming months. Earn-outs let buyers and sellers bridge differences in price by requiring buyers to shell out additional cash or stock should their new acquisition beat performance benchmarks. Of late, with credit abundant and suitors […]