Aquiline Capital Partners has acquired Conning & Co., a Hartford, Conn.-based provider of services and solutions to the insurance market, from Swiss Reinsurance Company Ltd. No financial terms were disclosed. Conning has approximately $70 billion of general account assets under management and $100 billion of total assets under contract.
That’s what a new study from Thomson Reuters and JPMorgan is suggesting. You can view the entire study, titled "The Era of Globalized M&A: Winds of Change," after the jump. Pointing out that private equity has historically been a key driver of M&A, the study discusses what we know as the “dry power,” or “overhang” conundrum. The disparity between the sheer amount of money invested in buyout funds and their inability to deploy it, the study argues, reflects a true negative in the market. The robust fundraising market “demonstrates clearly an over exuberance in the boom market rather than any prophetic insight prior to the subsequent busts.” In other words, LPs didn’t see this coming.
(Reuters) – Private equity firms are being dissuaded from bidding for Sara Lee Corp’s household and personal-care business because the seller wants to attract a bidder from its own sector rather than a financial buyer, a source familiar with the situation said on Tuesday. The New York Post, citing two people close to the process, […]
Mr. Mikes Restaurants Corp., a casual steakhouse franchisor in Western Canada, has raised an undisclosed amount of private equity funding from Yellow Point Equity Partners.
HM Capital Partners has acquired certain news media and associated real estate assets from Blethen Maine Newspapers Inc., a subsidiary of The Seattle Times Company. Citizens Financial Group arranged financing for the deal, for which pricing terms were not disclosed. The news assets include: The Portland Press Herald/Maine Sunday Telegram (the largest paper in the state, the Kennebec Journal, the Waterville Sentinel, the Coastal Journal and MaineToday.com.
HONG KONG (Reuters) – Stichting Pensioenfonds ABP, the pension fund for government and education employees in the Netherlands, bought convertible bonds of China’s top juice maker Huiyuan (1886.HK), according to a disclosure issued on Tuesday by the Hong Kong Stock Exchange (HKEx). Stichting Pensioenfonds ABP, which means “National Civil Pension Fund” and is often known […]
LONDON (Reuters) – Lovefilm, the DVD mailorder rental company, is considering launching an initial public offering, two people close to the situation said on Monday. The company is weighing up an IPO among several options after it was approached by a number of private equity firms looking to buy out existing shareholders. “I can confirm […]
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Alcoa Inc (AA.N) said on Monday that it completed the sale of its wire harness and electrical distribution business to Platinum Equity, a California-based private equity group for undisclosed terms. Alcoa said it expects to record a second-quarter loss from discontinued operations in connection with the deal. The business was the […]
Fox Business: Not doing so hot. Not so surprising. (24/7 Wall Street) A Very, Very Thorough Liveblog: Huntsman Vs. Hexion, summarized, bottom-up. (Deal Professor) At Least Someone Did: Dell's making money from Twitter! (Bits) Lessons from the Meltdown: Rubenstein predicts that the U.S. economy will emerge from what he called "the great recession" at the end of this year or early next year. (BW) Meanwhile: Carlyle is setting its sights on the banks, with Sarkozy in the driver's seat. (WaPo) Graphics: The largest bankruptcies in history. (Good)
Extended Stay went bankrupt, in part, because of its aggressive capital structure. The company was passed from one buyout firm (Blackstone) to another (Lightstone) at the top of the market. The deal, engineered by Wachovia's Rob "Large Loan" Verrone, took the company's debt-to-equity ratio to a crazy 12.7x from the already-high 11.1x at the time Blackstone Group bought it. Verrone got his nickname from his coworkers for obvious reasons. He was later named by the New York Times as part of the problem behind Wachovia's massive writedowns.