Gregory Roth

Bigger and bolder buyouts are indeed likely to materialize, but three senior PE executives told Reuters Insider not to look out for any multibillion dollar megadeals anytime soon. Garrett Moran, Blackstone's chief operating officer, John Coyle, a partner at Permira, and Steve Zide, managing director at Bain Capital, discussed the deal landscape with Reuters Insider's Jen Rogers. In the discussion, they answered some key questions: With so much cash committed to PE firms and on corporate balance sheets, is there a bidding war on the horizon between strategics and the private equity industry? And will takeover targets be lining up anytime soon to sell their firms at prices that PE firms expect? And finally, were the huge deals we saw in 2005 and 2006 an anomaly, and what kinds of deals now qualify as "big deals" these days anyway?

Redemption, of a sort, is likely to come to the California Public Employees’ Retirement System following Apollo’s initial public offering, which is set for Wednesday. In June 2007, CalPERS and the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority each bought 30 million non-voting shares in Apollo Global Management, for which each giant investor paid $600 million, or $20 per share. Those shares together represented an 18 percent stake in the company. The following year, the financial crisis pummeled these stakes. In 2009, according to Pensions & Investments, these shares fell on private exchanges to just $6 a share, a drop of nearly 70 percent from their purchase price. Adding to the anxiety over the drop in value was the fact that CalPERS was sold on the deal by Alfred Villalobos, a placement agent who is now under investigation for bribing CalPERS officials with lavish travel and gifts in order to secure investments for firms that he represented, including Apollo.

Attention Apollo buyers: Below is a graphic, released in its IPO disclosure documents, that shows the company’s future structure, and the complex set of relationships its public parts will have with all companies in the greater world of Apollo. Look closely to see where your shares fit in… An explanation, taken from Apollo’s S1, follows […]

After an embarrassing federal investigation into corruption charges at the New Mexico State Investment Council, legislators voted to remove the governor from chairing the board that approves decisions on where to invest the state's pension money. The current governor, Susana Martinez, is expected to sign the bill. She has sided with critics of the current system and has said that neither she nor any other politician should manage the state’s investments. If signed into law, the changes will be put into place in 2013, according to the Associated Press. The drive to lessen the role of politics in investment decisions stems from a federal investigation into the role played by a previous New Mexico governor, Bill Richardson. He was alleged to have channeled funds into projects that he favored. No charges have yet been announced.

In a determined effort to cleanse its damaged reputation, CalPERS released a scathingly detailed 56-page report investigating charges that former senior officials at the California Public Employees’ Retirement System were bribed with luxury gifts and travel from a prominent placement agent, Alfred Villalobos, in an effort to steer billions of dollars in investment funds toward […]

The Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan decided over the weekend to try to sell its 66 percent stake in Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment, the company that owns the fabled Maple Leafs of the National Hockey League, as well as the Raptors of the National Basketball League. Other assets include Toronto’s Air Canada Centre, where the two teams play, and the Toronto FC soccer club. The Maple Leafs team is one of professional hockey’s most legendary and valuable franchises, having won 11 Stanley Cup hockey championships. It hasn’t, however, won a NHL championship since 1967, the longest drought of any team in the league. The Ontario pension is reportedly seeking between C$1.3 billion and C$1.5 billion ...

In just five years, Luc Gerard’s Colombian private equity firm, Tribeca Asset Management, has built a $420 million portfolio of investments in companies that include swimwear maker OndadeMar, miner Brexia Resources and medical services provider Groupo Emi. Gerard was in New York last week to raise money for Tribeca’s new $750 million fund and to interview placement agents. Like Tribeca’s first five funds, Tribeca General Fund VI would be earmarked to invest mainly in Colombian companies, focusing on healthcare, natural resources, power generation and consumer goods. Unlike the firm’s first five funds, however, the new fund is Tribeca’s first to seek investors outside of Colombia. Gerard, a native of Congo who has lived in Colombia eight years, says he’s comfortable with the $750 million target, saying that several placement agents have told him the goal was reasonable given the firm’s track record. He’s aiming to have more than $500 million come from outside the country and Tribeca’s main LPs, Colombian pension funds.

Fortress Investment Group, one of the hardest hit of the publicly listed private equity firms, said its distributable income in the fourth quarter more than doubled to $122 million, or 24 cents a share, against $60 million one year ago. Analysts had expected earnings of 15 cents a share. But the big rise in Fortress’s […]

Mount Kellett Capital, the private equity fund run by ex-Goldman whiz Mark McGoldrick, has raised $732 million from 35 investors for its second fund, the Mount Kellett Capital Partners II LP, according to a recent regulatory filing. Nicknamed “Goldfinger,” McGoldrick has an extensive background in Asia, where he has worked most of his career. At […]

(UPDATE: CalPERS chief spokesman Clark McKinley has confirmed that alternatives manager Joncarlo Mark, who has been at the pension fund since 1999, has resigned from CalPERS staff, effective March 31.) The chief spokesman of CalPERS, the giant $228 billion California pension fund, countered a recent media report that said the fund’s de facto alternatives manager, […]