Erin Griffith

Mark Cuban: Hates the FroHawk, for no specific reason. Sovereign Loss Funds: Council of Foreign Relations blog tries to model Abu Dhabi and other SWF losses. "So much for forecasts that sovereign funds would emerge as a huge forces in global markets..." Why We Should Save Predictions For The Psychics: The Economist apologizes for its wrong predictions for this year. Before going on to make another round of bold calls for next year. (Dealbook) Something Fishy: Big Picture is very skeptical the Madoff family had nothing to do with the Ponzi scheme. Speaking of Madoff, here is the longest victim list I've seen. Nevermind, here's another one. Charles Ponzi: Dealbook outlines a century of Ponzi Schemes, including Mr. Ponzi, the OWCG (Original White Collar Gangsta).

Time magazine has launched 100 “Top Ten” lists of 2008. The magazine is courting page views with its slideshow format (garnering 10 page views for each list instead of one), so to save you time, dear readers, I’ve pulled out all the private equity mentions. Sadly, private equity did not make the Best Deals list, but it did score three “Worsties.” The winners (er, losers) come as no surprise, although I could think of a few more deals to throw in the mix. I was surprised, however, that TPG and Apollo’s investment in Harrah’s made number three while TPG’s stinger on WaMu clocked in all the way at number nine.

Layoff rumors have plagued GE Antares ever since last month, when its parent company, GE Capital, announced plans for $2 billion in cost savings. But employees of the mid-market lender can rest assured their jobs are safe for the remainder of the year, GE Antares spokesman Ned Reynolds told peHUB. Reynolds said no layoffs have taken place this month and no layoffs will occur in December. This conflicts with a recent report from The Deal, which stated the 120-person business would cut 20% of its work force the week of December 8. I’d also heard those rumors but Reynolds assured me that GE Antares has not and will not lay off any employees this month. “I’m not sure what was true a week ago but it’s not true today,” he said.

AIG Investments has laid off its head of European Alternative Investments business, Ion Bogdaneris, peHUB has learned. Bogdaneris’ bio, which has been removed from AIG’s website, is posted after the jump. Bogdaneris joined AIG Investments in 2006 after working as a senior advisor to Blackstone Group. The layoff occurred in recent weeks as AIG Investments cut a chunk of its European staff. (peHUB heard a rumor that 10% of the group’s employees were cut in Europe, including marketing, business development and sales.) His LinkedIn profile hasn't been updated yet, however. Meanwhile Raj Ranawat, a managing director in the direct investments group in London, was also laid off. Lastly, a source told peHUB that Devesh Bajoria, a senior analyst in the private equity

Only 44% of companies surveyed said they’re performing at “successful levels,” according to a survey released today by Ernst & Young. I quite like the Pendulum Of Stress they use, if not for the dramatic name, for the visual effect of showing relationships between various stages of performance and cash flow/burn. (View it after the […]

Layoffs at Blackstone: Seventy jobs, 7% of employees, affecting most of the business units. (Bloomberg) Do You Really Need an MBA: Surprisingly, MBAs in PE are not as common as you'd think, according to PEdatabase. Check out their mildly unscientific study, which shows only 39% of private equity CEOs and only 42% of Partners have an MBA. (Private Equity Database) Bloggers Influenced The Palin Pick: So why can't they influence a billion-dollar merger? Between Google and The New York Times... (Dealscape) Bigger than Enron: Angry clients stormed the Madoff Headquarters this morning, Clusterstock has the Google street view image.

UPDATE: Confusion Solved! See below. The Carlyle Group is raising a fund dedicated to financial services, as previously noted by peHUB. The operation, called Carlyle Global Financial Services Partners, started around June of this year. Yesterday CalPERS reported it had committed $150 million to the effort. According to the CalPERS document, the fund has closed on more than $600 million and “is targeting a final size in excess of $1 billion.” That doesn’t exactly match up with

KB Toys filed for Chapter 11 yesterday, or really, Chapter 22, since it's the toy retailer's second go-around in bankruptcy court. Both filings have private equity fingerprints all over them. In 2005, it was on Bain Capital's watch. This time the failed owner is Prentice Capital (more of a hedge fund). Unlike in 2005, however, KB Toys isn't going to reemerge. So it's actually more a Chapter 7 than Chapter 11. For its part, Prentice has had a rough go of it with distressed retailers. Goody's Whitehall Jewelers, and Levitz Furniture have all gone under on the firm's watch. Here's a good Dealscape post on it. But trouble in toy-land raises questions about the health of KB Toys' main competitor, Toys R Us, which was taken private for $8.2 billion in 2005 by KKR, Vornado Real Estate, and, despite getting burned by toys once, Bain Capital. That was an 11x EBITDA multiple, which looks both impossible and extravagant nowadays.

!!!!!: Bernard Madoff has been arrested for fraud! Fearmongering: Read the eight really scary predictions from "the market's sharpest thinkers." Among them, "Dow 4,000. Food shortages. A bubble in Treasury notes." We Have Been Saying This All Along: It was dumb to lever companies in declining industries, like newspapers. There must be a sentence generator online somewhere that pops out various versions of this line: "Private equity barons bought companies, issued debt to pay themselves dividends, and were hailed as master investors." Leaks: Yahoo's layoff script. I assume this is similar to the way most layoffs go down to avoid a mutiny, its kinda sad to read. A Little Advice: If you're written about in a blog, do not respond in the comments section. (We mean you Halsey Minor). Because this could happen.

As promised, I spoke with Phil Clough of ABS Capital Partners on his firm's blockbuster, crisis-defying exit. By blockbuster I mean a 17.5x return. By crisis-defying I mean IPO in the coldest offering climate in the past five years. Let's back up and look at what happened before asking how. In 2000, the Baltimore-based middle market buyout firm paid $10 million for American Public Education Group, an online higher education business that serves the military, police and fire department communities. The deal valued the company at $20 million In 2005, the firm invested $8 million more as it watched its investment and the online learning industry at large grow exponentially. That deal valued the company at $50 million. In 2007, with the company growing at a 70% clip, American Public Education went public and ABS made three times its money ($54 million). It only goes up from there. In February the stock was