Maybe this is the last issue of the summer, or the first issue of the fall. Whatever it is, our preoccupations remain pretty much the same: The financial crisis hangs in there like a particularly ugly summer cold.
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Leading off the issue,
David Carey offers a searching look inside the troubled buyout of General Motors Acceptance Corp. by Cerberus Capital Management LLC. The deal, a blockbuster at the time by some pretty savvy folks, has been hit by a variety of woes: a tough credit market, the by-now-numbing mortgage defaults, recession, high gas prices. Carey carefully runs through the difficulties. While he's not predicting that GMAC will necessarily fail, he does leave the impression that if it can pull it out it could be one of Cerberus' greatest turnarounds.
Elsewhere in the issue, we look at the bankruptcy business as the storm finally hits (this includes our quarterly bankruptcy league tables), and we take a deep dive into the complexities of the InBev SA acquisition of Anheuser-Busch Cos. -- our Deal of the quarter.
Cheryl Meyer sets the scene in her narrative of that big, cross-border strategic deal, but what really shines is an eye-popping graphical spread, assembled by Michael Rudnick and designed by our charts and graph maestro Steve Hart that packs as much context and info on this big deal as a magazine spread can hold. A beautiful piece of work.
The issue contains our usual columns and analysis pieces, including a look at how the U.K. is beginning to zero in on the use of derivatives to hide activist ownership of shares, a fascinating contextual take on the long relationship of Genentech Inc. and Roche Holding AG by
Alex Lash, and
David Carey's examination of some of the complexities of investing in distressed leveraged loans. A meaty issue for meaty times.
- Robert Teitelman
