Word: buyouts
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Hanns Ostmeier was stunned to pick up a popular German newspaper one recent Sunday and find a photo of himself along with several colleagues in a mock WANTED poster. Ostmeier's offense: he runs the German operations for the Blackstone Group, the big U.S. buyout firm. Blackstone isn't exactly a household name in Germany. But this spring, a top German politician named Franz Müntefering likened Blackstone and other private-equity groups to "swarms of locusts" that fall on companies and devour all they can before moving on. "Some financial investors don't waste any thoughts on the people...
...American money pours in, the deals are larger, more frequent and more highly leveraged. Five years ago, the largest European buyout transactions had a value of about $1 billion. Today's biggest deals are three times as large, and several private-equity groups are poring over at least one transaction involving a telecommunications firm in Spain that is worth more than $12 billion. One reason Europe is attractive: such huge firms as electronics giant Siemens, automakers DaimlerChrysler and Fiat and the French media company Vivendi Universal have shed operations they deem no longer core to their fundamental business. Also, investors...
That's where the controversy kicks in. In their drive to reduce working capital and improve cash flow to pay off the debts incurred during the buyout, managers can't afford to be sentimental about businesses that don't do well. They spin off, reorganize or shut down poorly performing subsidiaries. Thousands of workers can lose their jobs in the process. But what's bad for the workers is good for the company's financials...
...famed center for French porcelain, Gilles Schnepp has a perspective different from the government's anti--Anglo-Saxon mind-set. He is chief executive of Legrand, a $3 billion electrical equipment company that was acquired late in 2002 by KKR and French group Wendel in France's biggest buyout. Legrand had been in the process of merging with a French competitor, Schneider Electric, and suddenly found itself in limbo after the European Union vetoed the deal on antitrust grounds...
...billion if removal of the dam is included. Either way, it's a big chunk of change. By contrast, the cost of removing the Edwards Dam was just $3 million; it is estimated that taking out the Elwha dams will cost about $180 million, including a $30 million federal buyout of the dams' private owners...