It's been a tough 12 months for the sponsor groups at Wall Street's
biggest firms. For the last few years, the investment bankers in those
groups were riding high on a wave of megaprivate equity deals. Then
came the credit crunch and a clogged pipeline. Today, buyout volume is
way down, but the survivors are beginning to emerge from the rubble --
and rubble there is -- to a new day.
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This week in The Deal, Christine Idzelis
offers a survey of those groups, describing their new challenges and some of the new folks running these groups. We also probe a related area in deal financing: a trend that has seen private equity firms rejected -- subtly or not -- from corporate auctions. Vipal Monga discovers that there's some complexity beneath this trend, with recent struggles to get buyouts financed, such as the Clear Channel Communications Inc. LBO, stirring uncertainty among corporate sellers. The bigger question is: Will that tendency persist and for how long?
Read it and find out.Also in this issue is a special section from our Corporate Dealmaker affiliate on the always burning issue of
M&A valuations. In the main story, CD editor Kenneth Klee offers a sophisticated survey of best practices when it comes to generating M&A valuations. It's really required reading, no matter which side of the fence you're working, plus it's backed by a number of related CD stories. Give it a close read.
Elsewhere in the issue, Bill McConnell who runs our Washington office offers a comprehensive
survey of antitrust issues involving a number of current retail deals, including the much-mooted (but not yet real) Barnes & Noble Inc. bid for Borders Group Inc. In our occasional Deal Life column, Lou Moench examines
the ups and downs of buying a thoroughbred horse -- just in time for Triple Crown fever. And Renee Cordes in Brussels analyzes the
shifting landscape that confronts InBev SA as it ponders a bid for Anheuser-Busch Cos. In our columns, Media Maneuvers
picks through a somewhat dated story in The New York Times on Lehman Brothers Inc. and the so-called "curse" of Dick Grasso, while Backstory tackles Reed Elsevier plc's attempt to unload its B2B assets and how it's had to change its selling strategy in a very different market. -
Robert Teitelman
