David Toll

“He who has a thousand friends has not a friend to spare, while he who has one enemy shall meet him everywhere,” goes an adage attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson. I’m not sure if the Service Employees International Union qualifies as a full-blooded enemy of the buyout industry. But the union’s criticism does seem to […]

Most institutional investors, I imagine, are sympathetic to the plight of buyout professionals facing the prospect of paying higher taxes on carried interest. They recognize that a big reason so many bright people have migrated to private equity is that no where else (other than the hedge fund business, perhaps) can they get so wealthy […]

Buyout firms and their investors love to point to the high risk-adjusted returns they generate—and justifiably so. But I suspect that few in the industry take tax risk into account when making their calculations. If they did so, returns wouldn’t look quite so handsome. For years buyout firms and their investors have been rolling the […]

When it comes to charting U.S. buyout market fund-raising, think Mount Everest. Back in the 1990s, spike-booted U.S. buyout firms raised more and more money every year, almost without exception. By 1998, they raised $55.5 billion, nearly ten times as much as they had raised six years before, in 1992. The year 2000 saw a […]

Deal fees, monitoring fees and exit fees have become big business for buyout firms. Case in point: The Blackstone Group recently paid itself a $200 million deal fee for the $39 billion buyout of Equity Office Properties Trust, keeping half for itself per its deal with limited partners. Surprisingly, a handful of buyout firms decline […]

The TXU energy deal looks destined to become the biggest buyout ever. But the deal already may have set a record for the largest reverse break-up fee ever agreed to—an eye-popping $1 billion.  In just the last two years, reverse break-up fees have become a common feature of going-privates and other large LBO transactions, a […]

At least three companies owned by buyout firms made Standard & Poor’s monthly “weakest-link” list released today (Feb. 15)—Duane Reade Inc., Sunny Delight Beverages Co., and Ziff Davis Media Inc. It’s an ignominious distinction to be sure. But each company has been posting better results, and don’t expect their owners to give up without a […]

Following passage of pension legislation last summer, some fund-of-funds managers are finding their money isn’t quite as welcome as it used to be. David Watson, a partner at law firm Goodwin Procter LLP, said that a ticklish regulatory issue related to the legislation has popped up in three funds that he has negotiated on behalf of […]

Investors haven’t been in the driver’s seat for some time when it comes to negotiating terms of their LBO partnerships. Nevertheless, over the last few years they have succeeded in winning tougher key-person provisions, which are designed to protect investors in cases where key people abscond from a firm. Several years ago, a typical key-person […]

Buyouts Magazine is now accepting nominations for its seventh annual Deals of the Year Awards, which honor LBO firms and other participants for exceptional majority-stake transactions. Winners will be selected in 14 categories; results will be published in a special yearbook to be distributed along with the April 16 edition of the magazine. Awards will […]