Elsewhere on Friday,
- Investing fads and themes by year, 1996 to present.
- Unintended consequences on Wall Street.
- Chart of the day: How the old gold bugs lost control.
- Analyst date night:
Birds Eye Foods is being sold by its private equity owners for $1.3bn to Blackstone’s Pinnacle Foods, it was announced on Thursday. The deal, to be funded with $300m in additional equity from Blackstone and $1bn in debt,
KKR, the US buy-out firm run by Henry Kravis and George Roberts, on Thursday reported a Q3 profit of $656.6m in its first results after becoming a publicly listed company, amid a rebound in buy-outs, reports Bloomberg.
Five private equity groups are among the first-round bidders for Matalan, the privately owned UK discount clothing retailer that is being auctioned with an estimated price tag of about £1.5bn. TPG, Blackstone,
Guy Hands, head of UK buy-out group Terra Firma, has warned that unless governments push banks to restructure $7,000bn of leveraged loans due to mature by 2014, the US and Europe could face the “Japanese problem” of zero growth.
By way of a resuscitated campaign to have Ben Stein sacked from his various writing and promotion jobs, Felix Salmon at Reuters discusses a story about US consumers being deceived by dodgy online sign-up pitches and leads us to this: the relevant full blown staff report for Senate commerce committee chairman Jay Rockefeller.
Elsewhere on Wednesday,
- The madness of the inflation hawks.
- IPOs are back.
- Adam Smith in 10 minutes.
- Can options spikes be a coincidence?
- Faber on gold, and just about everything else.
Apollo Management, the US buy-out firm headed by former Drexel Burnham Lambert executive Leon Black, plans to list on the New York Stock Exchange in coming weeks. Apollo, which has $38.3bn in assets under management,
Hopu Investment Management, the Beijing-based buy-out fund set up by former Goldman Sachs dealmakers, is set to acquire a massive stake in China’s Minsheng Banking Corp as part of the lender’s $4bn Hong Kong IPO.
Elsewhere on Monday and the weekend,
- A field guide to wild and woolly financial conspiracies.
- A forensic reconstruction of Goldman’s 2008 prop trading.
- World out of balance.
- China is now the biggest risk to the international economy.
TPG is giving investors a chance to sharply reduce commitments to its specialised financial fund, highlighting the difficulties facing buy-out firms seeking to buy distressed banks. TPG Financial Partners originally gained commitments for a $6bn fund in February 2008 but cut back the size of the fund to $4.6bn in January.
Citigroup on Sunday said it had agreed to sell its 93.5% stake in Bellsystem24, a Japanese telemarketing company specialising in call centre operations, to Bain Capital for Y93.5bn ($1bn). Once complete,
Elsewhere on Friday,
- Forbes’ 67 most powerful people.
- The EU should stay out of hedgies’ pockets.
- Faber on gold.
- New crisis ahead? Five things to watch.
- Clear ‘rules of the game’ for free market capitalism.
Herein in full is “annex II” - the last minute principles to heavily regulate European hedge fund managers’ pay appended to the European Union’s draft Alternative Investment Fund Manager directive in the past 48 hours by the Swedish presidency of the EU council.
There’s been considerable gnashing of teeth over the downfall of the venerable American bed maker, Simmons. Having helped people sleep better for more than 135 years, the company answered to five different private equity masters before tumbling into insolvency under its most recent owner,
Elsewhere on Wednesday,
- If we were friends with John Paulson…
- Muni bonds: Buyer beware, really.
- The romance with stimulus isn’t just a fling.
- Your big chance to balance the US budget.
British Car Auction has attracted bids from a clutch of private equity groups that are expected to submit final offers next month valuing Europe’s biggest vehicle reselling network at between £400m ($670m) and £500m.
BC Partners, the UK-based buy-out group, is set to announce its entry to the fast-expanding US education market through the acquisition of ATI Enterprises, a Dallas-based operator of 24 college campuses,
The Brenninkmeijer family, owners of the C&A retail group, have offered to buy out other investors in Englefield Capital, the UK private equity group, including City figures such as Lord Myners, Lord Hollick and Sir John Rose.
Northrop Grumman has agreed to sell TASC, its advisory services division, for $1.65bn to buy-out firms General Atlantic and KKR. The deal was viewed as a benchmark to gauge the health of the private equity industry and comes after this year’s biggest LBO - a $5.2bn deal for TPG Capital and Canada Pension Plan to buy IMS Health,
Siguler Guff, the US group specialising in emerging markets and distressed debt investments, has made a rare private equity investment in a Russian bank by acquiring a stake in MDM Bank, one of the country’s biggest lenders.
Elsewhere on Wednesday,
- If the economy’s stagnant, why are stocks up?
- The edge: a golden opportunity remains.
- On the clash of economic theories (and commentators).
- John Paulson once had self-doubts.
Foreign private equity funds are this week expected to submit bids for Axa’s minority stake in Taikang Life, China’s fourth-largest insurer, which has been valued at up to $1bn. First-round bids are due by Friday and various overseas investors have signalled interest in the French insurer’s 15.6% stake,
Elsewhere on Monday, and on the weekend,
- More Goldman - how it secretly bet on the US housing crash.
- Roubini on dollar carry reversal - “he’s only halfway there”.
- Can Citigroup Carry Its Own Weight?
- It’s Japan we should be worrying about.
Elsewhere on Friday,
- Bernanke’s modern encapsulation of Friedman’s bold revelation.
- The story behind WaMu’s demise.
- ‘David Rosenberg makes Nouriel Roubini look like Mary Poppins’.
- If you want to rein in bankers’ pay,
TPG is set to complete one of private equity’s most successful Asian deals on Monday when Myer, the Australian department store group, debuts in Sydney with a market value of A$2.4bn ($2.2bn). TPG and its associate Blum Capital,
Elsewhere on Thursday,
- William J Bernstein’s Investor’s Manifesto, black swans, poker…
- Bloomberg kills its most popular feature.
- Back to the VC future: small as the new big.
- Bond bears:
Private equity group TPG has sold its 9 per cent stake Debenhams for £100m, making it the second of the department store’s three former owners to exit the group. Shares in Debenhams rose 3 per cent to 84.35p,
Elsewhere on Tuesday,
- Fixed rates and protectionism.
- Why are big banks even bigger?
- Maybe insider trading is okay…
- Australian dollar disaster.
- “This crisis will discredit those who ignore asset bubbles”.
Matalan, the privately owned UK discount retailer, is weighing a £1.5bn sale after a number of expressions of interest. Buy-out group CVC is among parties to have approached Matalan, which was taken private by its founder and controlling shareholder John Hargreaves amid acrimony with institutional investors and non-executive directors three years ago.
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