Erin Griffith

More than a year into fundraising for its fifth vehicle, Castle Harlan is less than halfway to its $1.5 billion target, peHUB has learned. The fund, Castle Harlan V, began its pre-marketing as early as September of 2007, according to industry reports. It was officially formed in December of 2007, and launched fundraising in early […]

Gift Horse: "Every family business should have a plan to sell," according to a book by Tom Deans, a guy who worked his way up at a family business. He believes gifting a business kills it. (Canadian Private Equity) [Ed. note: Apparently around 12 hours after I linked to the blog "Canadian Private Equity," the entire thing has been deleted! Strange. But never fear, Google cache never forgets. You can still read the post I linked to right here, just scroll down to the second post titled "Does Gifting a Family Business Destroy It?"] We're Aware: The FT "breaks" the stale news that mega-buyouts are having a tough time raising their funds and smaller funds, like Riverside, are now more attractive. Ironic, considering Riverside's own micro-cap fund has been placed on hold due to a lack of interest. (FT) Bob Marley Now Owned By Wall Street: Want the background of Hilco Consumer Capital's deal with the Bob Marley brand? Macleans has an in-depth piece on it this week. Making Lemonade: Madoff is helping private equity, according to Robert Tomei of Advanced Capital. "It will push investors away from hedge funds to private equity." (FT) Fine Lines: How is Pimco both a private investor and manager of government bailout programs? Is Bill Gross "too big?" (Fortune)

FdG Associates has bought a company that stands to benefit from the new economic stimulus package, but according to managing director Doug Dossey, there’s plenty of growth beyond that spending. “The stimulus package, we view, as icing on the cake,” he says. Yet it’s hard to argue that the firm’s purchase of Joseph B. Fay Co., a civil constructor and demolition company, could have come at a better time. The company expects that business from the stimulus package could drive the growth for the first 12 to 18 months of FdG's ownership. States like Utah and California face acute budget pressures, but with money from the stimulus package, they won’t have to match federal funding for their “shovel-ready” projects.

March 3 is a very big day for the financial sector. It’s the deadline to report their fourth quarter earnings, and you can bet those are going to be some depressing calls. Aside from KKR and Blackstone, peHUB will be closely watching announcements from the BDCs. In particular, we’ll be interested in Allied Capital and […]

If you're a mid-market lender, chances are that you've canned a few people in recent weeks (I believe the sanitized term is "headcount reduction"). We're hearing about layoffs and office closings at Orix Capital Markets, Bank of Ireland, Newstar Financial and National City. That's in addition to the cuts we recently reported at Churchill Financial and Freeport Financial. To be more specific: Bank of Ireland laid off 10% of its staff around a month ago, a source close to the situation said. It doesn't plan any further reductions, and has around 30 on its staff now. The layoffs are concentrated in the origination side and were driven by a lack of deal flow.

Someone's Hiring: CFO.com has a listing for a pre-MBA Analyst at a Venture Capital/Private Equity. (CFO) Ouch: OMERs released its year-end results and, as said by a blog called Pension Pulse, "took a drubbing in private equity." The blog reports that "private equity returns were down a 13.7% in 2008 - a whopping 27.2% below the PE benchmark return of +13.5%." It Happened: The Internet has officially topped print as a source of news in the US. (Reportr.net) Apparently: Ya'll are "flocking" to SecondMarket, the consignment shop for PE and hedge fund secondary sales. (FT)

Last week we learned that a long list of buyout firms are in the bidding for Oriental Brewery, South Korea's second largest beer maker. Meanwhile, New York-based buyout firm KPS Capital Partners has agreed to purchase Labatt USA from Anheuser-Busch InBev. We suggested the rash of interest must be countercyclical. The idea being, of course, that people turn to drinking when times get tough. But that's not the case at all. Stats guru Nate Silverman of FiveThirtyEight has concluded that booze is in fact not countercyclical. According to his analysis, sales of alcohol for off-premises consumption dropped 9.3% in the fourth quarter last year! That's 5.6 points greater than the prior largest drop, a 3.7% decline in the back half of 1991.

As usual, I have a week and a day’s worth of Moody’s and S&P downgrades on PE-backed companies. This week, there were nine new ones, including two backed by Warburg Pincus and two from Bain Capital. (Apologies for the delay as I was out Friday and Monday) Company: Rafaella Apparel Group Sponsor: Cerberus Capital Management Downgrade: S&P announced a corporate credit rating downgraded from 'CCC' from 'B-'.The outlook is negative. Highlights: “We estimate that leverage may increase to over the 11.5x area (assuming debt levels do not increase significantly from current levels) if revenues decline by about 13% for fiscal 2009 from fiscal 2008 levels and EBITDA margins remain in the low single digits, which may reduce Rafaella's net income covenant cushion.”

Awkward Conversations: Remember the most expensive house in the world? "A Russian billionaire is desperately trying to claw back his £39million deposit after a deal to buy the most expensive house in the world fell through," The Daily Mail reports. Yikes. The Rest Of the World: People outside the econoblogosphere, even high school students have issues with the stimulus plan. Here's what a few of them think. (East Valley Tribune) You Asked: You get it. Caroline Baum responds to criticism that it's easy to tear down the stimulus package without offering a solution. Here are five steps. (Bloomberg) Get Smart: How to make your own shoe phone. (Engadget) CNBC: W.L . Ross discusses what the stimulus plan will do for the markets. (CNBC)

Our Reuters colleague Mike Flaherty today reported that several buyout firms are circling South Korean beermaker Oriental Brewery, which is hoping to garner more than $2 billion. There are lots of interested suitors -- including Blackstone, Bain, KKR, MBK and Affinity Partners -- but this deal seems like it should be a real longshot. There’s only one way this type of deal would make sense, and that’s if it looks like last year's Weather Channel transaction. In that case, two buyout firms (Blackstone Group and Bain Capital) teamed up with a strategic buyer (NBC) to purchase the Landmark Communication divestiture. Part of the reason PE buyers of the second largest South Korean brewery would/should need to team up with strategic buyers