Steve Bills
As the euro zone crisis eases to a dull, chronic economic ache, U.S. distress investors are beginning to look across the Atlantic for business opportunities. Lone Star Funds, the Dallas-based buyout shop with a fresh $5 billion of dry powder, has done a series of deals with banks on the Continent in an apparent bet that the worst is past and Europe’s troubled financial sector is poised to recover.
Babson Capital Management is consolidating five of its mid-market lending unit into a single organization, paving the way for the company to build out a new suite of products for investors, such as customized accounts and commingled funds.
Legislation that would ease leverage constraints on business development companies has started a rare public controversy within the BDC community, a group that lends to sponsor-backed businesses with annual revenue of less than $500 million.
It was one of the biggest buyout funds ever raised, it backed some of the largest LBOs, and it was part of the vintage 2006 that had to contend both with a financial crisis and the Great Recession. Nevertheless Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. appears to be on a reasonably successful track with KKR 2006 Fund LP as it continues the harvest phase.
After a slump in leveraged lending earlier in the year, new-deal financing popped in March before easing again in April, said Stefan Shaffer, the managing partner of SPP Capital Partners LLC, a boutique investment bank that specializes in mid-market lending. After three years of historically low interest rates, “most issuers have either refinanced or recapped […]
North American buyout shops raised $2.2 billion in investor commitments in mid-May, bringing the total for the year to $33.8 billion for buyout and mezzanine funds. At this point last year, firms had raised $63.8 billion for new funds.
Billionaire hedge fund manager Louis Bacon is placing a big bet on mid-market lending by backing a new firm that is seeking to raise a $750 million debt fund aiming at the lower end of the middle market, two sources told Buyouts.
A company that conducts a dividend recap and then defaults on its debt fares no worse for its creditors than a company that defaults without a recap, Moody’s Investors Service Inc. reported.
Industry expertise may be less important to portfolio company management than the right kind of cultural fit, according to Geoff Smart, the chairman and CEO of the personnel consulting firm ghSMART & Company Inc., and Jordan Burton, a partner in the practice. As the buyouts industry grew up in the 1980s, its early focus was […]
U.S. buyout shops added $3.9 billion to the year’s fundraising tally during the latter part of April, bringing the year’s total of buyout and mezzanine funds to $31.5 billion.