Wednesday, November 21, 2007

Strip and Flip or Strip and Slip

The business press suggests potential internecine warfare between private equity and bond holders. For example:

Thornton, Emily. 2007. "Perform or Perish." Business Week (5 November): pp. 38-45.
Box p. 43: "50% of the U.S. companies that defaulted on their debt this year, half were owned by private equity companies."
And then:
Cimilluca, Dana. 2007. "Buyout Firms: Refined Rulers?" Wall Street Journal (20 November): p. C 3.

"Bondholders, after all, are natural enemies of private-equity firms, because the value of a company's bonds tends to plunge when a private-equity firm wants to buy it."


1 comment:

Myrtle Blackwood said...

I think I can understand KKR's Henry Kravis. What he's about. He spells it out:

Look, don't congratulate us when we buy a company, congratulate us when we sell it.

and

"Since we formed the firm in 1976, we've bought some 38 different companies, and we spent about $65 billion, buying these different companies.

But this is where Henry gets confused:

You only have one thing to sell in life, and that's yourself.
Henry Kravis

Oh well. All these people working twice as hard, for a paycut and then losing their jobs after all. Where would Henry get the money to patronise American public television and art museums without all their effort?