Private Equity Giants See Big Payday—If They Don't Go Bust

Tax loopholes, money tricks benefit bosses like Mitt Romney: James Surowiecki

(NEWSER) - Mitt Romney's opponents have slapped Bain Capital over layoffs, but private equity actually has little overall effect on job numbers. Instead, the crimes of such companies are centered on the way they make money, writes James Surowiecki in the New Yorker . What we should be concerned about is the companies' "financial gimmicks" that score profits "not from management or investing skills but, rather, from the way the US tax system works." At the heart of the problem are the "special dividends" that such firms have taken on in recent years. More»

Wall Street Journal says Romney's firm didn't always turn things around

(NEWSER) - Mitt Romney has touted his time at Bain Capital as proof that he's the "turnaround artist" America needs, but an analysis of the companies he took over shows that may not be entirely true. The Wall Street Journal looked at 77 businesses Bain invested in under Romney's leadership and found that 22% went bankrupt or closed their doors within eight years—a rate that appears to be higher than other buyout firms of that era, and which one Federal Reserve Bank researcher says "seems large." More»

Huge private equity company to open its books

(NEWSER) - The Carlyle Group is going public. The mammoth private equity company has filed paperwork with the SEC for what’s planned as a $100 million initial public offering, the Washington Post reports. The move will open its books to public scrutiny, shining a light on the array of 270 disparate businesses and properties it has a stake in. The group owns, for example, Nielsen Co., a truck transmission company, a Brazilian lingerie firm, Asian forests, and a string of Connecticut rest stops. More»

Chain seeks whopper of a private equity deal

(NEWSER) - Burger King wants it its way, right away: The world's second-biggest burger chain is looking for a buyer to take it off the stock market. Burger King execs have been in talks with various private equity firms in recent weeks, sources tell the Wall Street Journal , naming British firm 3i as one potentially interested party. The chain, which has been a public company since 2006, hasn't fared as well as the Golden Arches amid the economic downturn—sales and revenue both dropped last year. More»

(USER SUBMITTED) - Seems the titans of Wall Street, and here we mean the private equity buyout shops including Warburg Pincus, Carlyle, TPG, and KKR, have amassed $500 billion to buy companies. Their problem? Not enough to buy and rising prices for what is out there. Plus it's a lot harder to leverage deals with debt in a post-bank-meltdown world. Read the full article . More»