Steve Bills

At our Buyouts Chicago conference last week, we tried out an audience-response technology, so the participants at the event could vote on issues of interest. Among other things, our crowd said Mitt Romney will win the Republican nomination for president in 2012 but Barack Obama will win the general election, the next economic slump won't occur 2016 or later, and it is better today to be a seller than a buyer of companies. Click below for full results.

PNC Financial Services Group Inc. has decided to do away with limited partners for its latest mezzanine fund, instead providing the full $500 million from its own balance sheet to its affiliate PNC Mezzanine Capital, sources told sister publication Buyouts. The move by the Pittsburgh bank is an apparent response to the Volcker Rule, a […]

Irving, Texas-based NGP Energy Capital Management LLC has begun raising the 10th fund in its main complex of funds, and has held a $568.3 million first close toward its $4.75 billion target, according to a regulatory filing reviewed by sister publication Buyouts. The new fund, NGP Natural Resources X LP, is the successor to a […]

TPG Capital, the $48 billion buyout mega-firm, is planning to crack the leveraged lending business by forming a business development company, sister publication Buyouts reports. The San Francisco firm’s plans were disclosed by the New Jersey State Investment Council, which made a $52.4 million pledge to TPG Specialty Lending Inc., which has a target fund […]

New trend in unitranche: Lenders have been trying to become more competitive with lower-cost alternatives by tranching a loan out on the back end, according to Ronald Kahn, a managing director in the debt advisory practice at Chicago investment bank Lincoln International LLC, who discussed the phenomenon with sister publication Buyouts. While the lenders still present […]

Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. is more than halfway to its $1 billion target on a fund dedicated to mezzanine investing, according to a regulatory filing. Although the New York buyout giant has long had a debt-investing strategy—it has, for example, a publicly traded subsidiary, KKR Financial Holdings LLC, founded in 2004, that invests primarily […]

LinkedIn is the darling of the market, pricing its IPO Wednesday at $45 and trading late today at $97.83, up 117%. But this is a big yawn compared to the days of the dotcom bubble. To put this in perspective, we thought we would look back at the top first-day pops by venture capital-backed IPOs, dating back to 1990. This slide show is a countdown, presented ranked by first-day percentage gain.

The California Public Employees' Retirement System is, as everybody knows, the nation’s largest public pension fund with $233.6 billion of assets as of March 31 (the latest figure available, reported today). It also has one of the industry's largest portfolios of private equity investments; its $33.2 billion Alternative Investment Management program represents 14.2% of its total assets. We thought it would be interesting to find some of the system's top-ranking funds, which it reports on its Web site. The list that follows is current through Sept. 30. Sponsors report mark-to-market values on their portfolios quarterly, and they have 120 days to provide the information to their investors, so there is a two-quarter lag before CalPERS reports individual fund performance to the public. This slide show is a countdown, presented ranked by investment multiple. (As a point of comparison, when sister publication Buyouts Magazine did its annual ranking of fund performance last fall, based on reports from multiple sponsors, we found that it required a 2.0 investment multiple to crack the top quartile.) We had one tie, at No. 8. There we ranked T3 Partners II LP higher than CVC European Equity Partners III LP because of its larger IRR.

Sponsor-backed industrial giants have been busy in 2011. sister publication Buyouts finds. Three of the largest LBO deals went public again since the first of the year, while others have taken advantage of easy credit conditions to extend debt maturities. Even the troubled Energy Future Holdings Co., facing a claim by a creditor of a techincal default, was able to extend the maturities on $17.8 billion in debt. A word about our methodology: Our list of biggest deals is derived from a Thomson Reuters database of private equity deals. We chose the largest buyout deals of U.S. companies that file quarterly statements with the SEC. We excluded foreign companies, deals that were predominantly about the real estate, companies that no longer have private equity sponsors (as a result of IPOs or strategic sales) and those that do not file 10-Ks. Here is a roundup of recent developments, based on regulatory filings, company announcements and news reports.

Sensing a continuing demand by limited partners to invest in distress, Greenwich, Conn., buyout shop Littlejohn & Co. is raising a $500 million side fund for non-control deals. The firm, a specialist in distress investing, has already held a first close of $16.1 million for the Littlejohn Opportunities Fund LP, a regulatory filing from January […]