Blackstone, the private equity firm, has paid £1.03bn in cash to buy The Tussauds Group, which owns leisure assets including Madame Tussauds and the London Eye, from Dubai International Capital. The acquisition takes Merlin Entertainments, Blackstone’s leisure parks business, to second place in the international leisure parks industry in terms of visitor numbers after Disney. The deal brings together Blackstone’s leisure assets including the London Dungeon and Legoland theme parks with Tussauds’ waxworks, Alton Towers and Chessington World of Adventures and creates a group with ebitda of almost £200m.
[…] Tuesday-to-Tuesday, headlines have been dominated by falling stock prices around the world but I detect signs of change. In the daily torrent that is Alphaville, the FT’s City Blog, were two stories yesterday that remind me of what used to make the front pages all of about a week ago; Private equity mega-deals. Blackstone, a private equity group, has bought Kylie’s bottom, along with the rest of her, thousands more waxworks and the London Eye. It’s also in the market for Chrysler. […]