A few additional thoughts on last Thursday’s Return of the Corporate Raiders column, and then some additional notes: *** Some of you wrote in to ask why I was harping on management fee termination agreements, instead of on the management fee agreements themselves. Do I find the former objectionable and the latter appropriate? Nope. Both […]
One of my political pet peeves is when elected officials hold to untenable positions for the sake of appearing “consistent.” Ditto in business, when certain mergers go through even though each side already has become a bit wary of the other. So it’s refreshing to learn that MidOcean Partners and Ripplewood Holdings have canceled a […]
The heat wave is winding down, the beloved Red Sox are breaking down and unemployment is going up. In other words, it’s time for Friday Feedback. Lots of emails about the proposed minimum wage hike (you don’t like it), the HCA deal (you like it) and the new VC fund model proposed by Stage1 Ventures […]
Burger King is supposed to represent the best of what private equity has to offer. Unfortunately, it also represents the worst. For the uninitiated: Burger King was acquired in 2002 by Bain Capital, Goldman Sachs Capital Partners and Texas Pacific Group. The transaction was valued at around $1.5 billion, including just $300 million in equity. […]
The National Venture Capital Association and Thomson Financial have released their latest set of private equity fund performance data (both VC and LBO). The big news is that 1-year, 3-year and 5-year cumulative performance all rose between Q4 2005 and Q1 2006, while 10-year and 20-year figures remained fairly steady. The press release can be […]
The sun is shining, the minimum wage is (hopefully) about to be raised and I’ve got to pack up the uncharismatic VW for a weekend in New Hampshire. In other words, it’s time for Friday Feedback. *** First up is a question from David on the HCA deal: “Would KKR take a piece of it […]
A popular press sport right now is to identify public companies that could be snatched up by leveraged buyout firms. Lots of attention being paid to perceived under-valuations, P/E ratios, lender proclivities, etc. But rather than providing a list of companies that could receive bids, let’s approach it from a different angle: How many U.S.-listed […]
Welcome to a brutally busy news morning. We’ve got the largest leveraged buyout in history (HCA), WL Ross getting acquired (conference call at 10am), VC disbursement data indicating that Q2 2006 was the busiest quarter since Q1 2001 (MoneyTree Survey figures come tomorrow) and some other multi-billion buyout deals that can’t even crack our Top […]
I’ve long been on record as saying that the worst-ever VC deal came in 2000, when Hummer Winblad Venture Partners invested $15 million into file-swapper/stealer Napster Inc. The reason is threefold: Napster already was facing several copyright infringement lawsuits, with several more expected to follow. The deal included a provision whereby HWVP partner Hank Barry […]
The sun is shining, the Israelis are escalating and at least one GOP chief executive (Schwarzenegger) understands the inanity of throwing out embryos when they could be used to further scientific research. In other words, it’s time for Friday Feedback. First up is an extended email from Gilman Louie, the founding CEO of In-Q-Tel who […]