At this point maybe we should just keep a list of who isn’t buying Lehman Brothers. Earlier this week it was the Koreans and HSBC. Now “sources familiar with the situation” have told Reuters (who broke the story of the Korean Development Bank) that Blackstone and Kohlberg Kravis Roberts are looking to acquire pieces Lehman’s real estate and asset management units.

Blackstone was said by the Financial Times to be out of the running for the asset management unit, so we’re assuming that it’s mainly interested in the real estate group. Has anyone seen Jon Gray, who runs Blackstone’s powerful real estate arm, over at Lehman HQ lately?

Blackstone, KKR eye Lehman assets: sources [Reuters]

How bad is the reputation of private equity? Months after private equity companies began to back away from deals that no longer seem promising in our credit crunched world, the Royal Bank of Scotland has told many of the biggest private equity firms they aren’t welcome in the first round of the auction of the bank’s insurance business, according to the Financial Times reports.

Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, Blackstone and Apax Partners had reportedly planned to bid in the auction, but were told by RBS that they were being excluded. Exclusion from the auction is widely being interpreted as demonstrating a clear vote of no-confidence in the ability of private equity buyers to secure financing necessary to close acquisitions.

RBS spurns buy-out groups [Financial Times]

Another day, another crisis in the credit markets. KKR Financial, which is a publicly traded investment vehicle run by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, made headlines this morning when it asked for a restructuring of billions of dollars in short-term debt. Apparently they’ve struck a bargain with their investors to delay the repayment of the debt, which was due last Friday, until March. But reading about the story of KKR Financial is like watching the credit crunch in action.

Our second favorite reaction to yesterday’s KKR video comes from Fake Ben Bernanke:

Now it seems everyone is a self-appointed YouTube firm critic. Dan Primack criticizes the firm for not addressing serious issues with private equity. Andrew Ross Sorkin reminds me of my intern and thinks it’s a noteworthy story. Bess Levin just wants to be Henry Kravis. Good for Bess. I’m no Randian Greenspan, but those teachers need to work harder if they want to earn $450 million a year. To the language teacher in the video, I suggest she move to another country and teach English — it’ll be easier to earn the equivalent of $57,000 US dollars per hour in another currency.

Henry Kravis makes $57,000 PER HOUR. [NewsGroper]

Brave New Films held a screening of “The War on Greed: Starring the Homes of Henry Kravis” this morning in front of the KKR founder’s 625 Park Avenue apartment in an attempt to shame him into…something. Unfortunately, director Robert Greenwald didn’t do any recon before planning the event, and was disappointed to find out that Hank is currently on vacation in Palm Beach, at his 15,000 square foot home on North Lake Way, and would not be able to catch the flick**. Oh well. This is why they invented DVDs, and the WGA worked so hard on those sandwich boards.

The movie is a Cribs-style look at Kravis’s five homes, which he’s undoubtedly already familiar with, and includes some interviews with a bunch of people who make less money per year than the buyout king does in an hour— $51,369—for shock value. (Not too much shock or value, though, because there are no interviews with anyone who makes significantly less than HK, meaning this girl). No sequel starring Stephen Schwarzman (‘s houses) has been planned, because apparently SS’s homes don’t have the height to make them leading men material.

Dan Primack’s problems with the film are that Greenwald “tries to provide some “substantive” context, in a simplistic and damning definition of private equity,” he’s “stuck in the 1980s and early 1990s,” and his “definition of PE fails to point out that some PE-backed firms add employees and increase value for the shareholders – which happen to be public pensioners, universities and charitable foundations.” Mine are that it it doesn’t make me want to hate Kravis, it makes me (and the youth of America I watched it with) want to emulate him. And also, that there weren’t any shots of the gift-wrapping room in HK’s house in the Dominican Republican. Other than that, good movie.

The War on Greed [PEHub]

A Movie and Protesters Single Out Henry Kravis [NYT]

*The best part of every episode of Cribs
**KKR wouldn’t confirm this but I sense it’s true.

Hey guess what? Stephen Schwarzman and Henry Kravis might have the same personal net worth, even though Blackstone is worth significantly more than KKR. Who gives a shit? I’m going to go out on a limb and say this guy.

As we noted in Opening Bell this morning, another big buyout has gone the way of all mortal things. Today’s entry into the deal graveyard is the $8 billion Kohlberg Kravis Roberts and Goldman Sachs buyout of Harman International. According to most news stories on the deal, Goldman and KKR are forking over $400 million in exchange for convertible notes, Harman’s using the money for a stock buy-back, and everyone’s amicable, honky-dory, smiles and handshakes about the new deal.

But when we squint at the fine text, we’re not sure that Harman should be smiling so widely. According to the acquisition agreement, the company was due to collect a $225 million break-up fee if KKR and Goldman walked. So what’s seems to be happening is that they are selling $400 million of notes to the balking buyers for $175 million. Let’s call that a 57% discount. So Harman will now owe $400 million of principal to KKR and Goldman in exchange for just $175 million beyond what they were arguably already due according to the agreement.

But Goldman and KKR are getting more than just the notes. They are getting an option to buy the stock. Typically, a convertible note is linked to a share price that places the option currently out of the money. But if we follow through on the idea that Goldman and KKR are buying the notes at a discount, we can see that these are actually currently in the money. The $104 a share translates into 3.8 million shares for $400 million of notes. Those shares are now trading at $85, which means that the buyers have entitled themselves to $326 million of shares for just $175 million dollars.

To put it even differently, after the discount, the deal prices the shares at $59. We’re not sure that’s exactly the “vote of confidence” in Harmon that its executives are touting. Harman may now have an additional $175 million for a buyback but this seems a steep price to pay for that money.

Of course, if you figure that break-up fees are not sunk costs for dead deals because the buyers aren’t ever going to pay them anyway—a growing trend from private equity buyers, to be sure—then we guess it does sound like great deal for Harman. It’s probably just our short-sighted stinginess that makes us think in terms of additional, incremental dollars in the deal rather than the complete $400 million package.

KKR and GS Capital Partners to Invest in Harman International [Press release via Market Watch]

The market for LBO loans has opened up since the catastrophe of August. By offering the loans to investors at a discount, and eating the loss, the banks that committed to make them have begun to clear them off their books But, as the Wall Street Journal’s Henny Sender reports today, the amount of loans that have been sold—about $30 billion—are “a drop in the bucket” compared to the total of $310 billion of LBO loans still waiting to be placed. And that’s just from North American deals. Nearly a third of that is set to come into the market in the next thirty days, according to the Journal.

This data may shed new light on the reported plan of KKR to buy LBO loans from Citi, including LBO loans that went to finance KKR deals, and Citi’s reported plan to lend money to KKR to buy those loans. After speaking to several loan syndication professionals, we have come up with what looks like the logic of this deal.

The banks are worried that while there has been some investor appetite for LBO loans, there may not be enough to absorb the total amount they plan to bring to market. A flood of new loans selling into lowered demand could put pressure on the banks to make even steeper discounts, creating even larger losses at a time when the banks are attempting to put the legacy of credit market losses behind them. The alternative—keeping the loans on the books and hoping for better days ahead—is no better for banks trying to show shareholders that they cleaned the debt mess off their books.

Enter KKR. Without public shareholders and armed with lock-up agreements from investors, it can take a longer view of the debt market. Although a lot of debt is currently scheduled to come to market in the coming weeks and months, there may be a drought of those loans just over the horizon. The slowdown of leveraged-buyout deals this summer means that there will, eventually, be fewer loans coming to market. And this drought could hit just when investor appetite for debt is recovering. At that point, KKR would be in a great position to sell the loans at prices above the discounted price at which they bought them from Citi.

At the same time, Citi might be comfortable sitting on newer loans which it can claim it is syndicating on schedule rather than older loans. This is a sleight of hand but one that shows at least a certain kind of agility that Citi may hope will please investors. Citi too could hope to take advantage of a renewed appetite for debt and the coming LBO loan drought, and sell those loans at par, reducing losses that it might have incurred selling into a flooded market now.

We’ve said it before, but we’ll say it again: different time horizons create different profit opportunities. The logic of “if they’re buying, why are you selling” assumes a homogenous market of buyers and sellers, when in fact the market is characterized by heterogeneity. And private equity firms—at least those that don’t feel answerable for stock prices to public shareholders—are often in a position to take advantage of opportunities only available to those with longer time horizons.

Damn it must feel good to be a Kravister.

Debt on Sale: Banks Grease The Leveraged-Loan Machine [Wall Street Journal]

Let’s see if we have this straight. Citigroup wants to sell off some on the leverage loans it committed to before the credit crunch. Many of those loans were made to private equity owned companies for leverage buyouts, including companies that KKR bought. A fund managed by KKR is looking to buy the leveraged loans, which it believes are under-priced in the wake of the credit market turmoil. But everyone knows KKR doesn’t buy anything with cash: it borrows the money. So now, according to the Financial Times, Citigroup might lend money to KKR to buy Citigroup’s loans.

This is very possibly the best story ever. The only way it could get better is if KKR went on to buy the loans used to buy loans from Citigroup. And, of course, Citigroup lent it the money for that. And then, well, you get the point. In the end of our fantasy, Citigroup’s stock get’s hammered by investors skeptical of this snake-eating-its-tail lending scheme. And get bought out by KKR. With loans from….

Insiders report that credit market expert Charles Ponzi has been retained as an adviser to both Citigroup and KKR for the transaction.

Citigroup talks to KKR about leveraged debt [Financial Times]

First Data was supposed to be one of the big leveraged buyout deals teetering on the edge of extinction thanks to the credit crunch this summer. The debt load of the company was said to be at the outer limits, leaving it with razor thin margins for slip-ups. But last week investors snapped up its $5 billion buyout loan. In fact, the loan was over-subscribed by about $2 billion.

Last night First Data said the deal had closed. First Data has gone private, and its stock has been removed from the New York Stock Exchange.

Earlier this month, the buyout firm behind the deal, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co, was said to be in a nasty negotiation with the seven banks involved in arranging the First Data transaction. The banks had become nervous about massive loans on their books, and were pressing KKR to renegotiate its deal. KKR eventually did offer one concession—a leverage ratio financial test in its bank loans that has been described as “toothless” and “mere optics.”

While there are still questions about the financing—banks continue to look for ways to syndicate the nearly $24 billion in debt financing they committed to the deal—but fears that the credit crunch might derail the biggest deals, or leave a the financing banks with large losses, seem to be abating.

KKR completes $26 billion First Data takeover [Reuters]

Just how much of a “concession” on the part of Kohlberg Kravis Roberts’ was its agreement to put a maintenance covenant in the buyout loans for First Data. Yesterday’s Wall Street Journal reported it as a major triumph for the banks committed to making the loans, writing “KKR has blinked.”

That interpretation has been directly challenged by DealBook’s Michael J. de la Merced who began his item on the addition of the covenant with the words: “Kohlberg Kravis Roberts has not blinked.”

“K.K.R. appears to have agreed to a covenant without any real teeth,” de la Merced writes. “Calling the development a ‘concession’ is overstating the case, a person with knowledge of the discussions told DealBook. The $24 billion offering for First Data’s debt will still include pay-in-kind toggles, an investor-unfriendly kind of bond which allows interest payments to be made by issuing more notes.”

When we posted on the addition of a covenant yesterday, DealBreaker readers took a position largely consistent with DealBook’s interpretation. One fact that stood out to many readers is that the PIK-toggle seems to have stayed in place, allowing First Data to make interest payments on its loans by issuing new debt. KKR is unlikely to let a leverage ratio covenant render the PIK toggle ineffective, which implies that the covenant will have to be very loose to allow for the new debt.

So its possible that the covenant may be nothing more than what some would call “optics”—a change meant to make the deal appear better from the perspective of investors without changing the substance.

“And First Data can’t afford real maintenance tests either,” de la Merced adds. “Normally, if a company fails to meet its performance requirements, it must meet with its lenders, who can demand payment in exchange for a waiver. But because of its newly razor-thin margins, First Data would be hard-pressed to pay up if it failed to meet its earnings criteria.”

A Concession in the First Data Deal? Hardly [Dealbook]

The banks have won the first big show down with private equity.

Last night several news outlets, including the Wall Street Journal, reported that private equity giant Kohlberg Kravis Roberts has signaled a willingness to include a financial covenant for the bank loan portion of the $24 billion of debt needed to finance its purchase of First Data.

First Data was largely viewed as a test case for some of the biggest, and riskiest, of the highly leveraged buyout deals that are scheduled to close in the next few weeks and months. The banks had been asking the private equity sponsors of the deals for concessions on the terms of the financing, saying it was having trouble syndicating the debt due to recent concerns about debt levels by many investors.

KKR Europe chief Johannes Huth has readily available completely made-up statistics to ward off those who contend that PE firms are just “financial engineers.”

From Deal Journal:

At a panel discussion in Frankfurt today, Huth said the private-equity firm earns most of its money — 60% of it actually — from improving the operations of companies it buys. According to Huth, 25% to 30% of the gains in its portfolio come from reducing debt at those companies. (The remainder comes from “multiple expansion,” or a broad increase in market values.)

The fact that a PE firm doesn’t earn anything by merely “improving” company operations, and that an operational improvement would in many cases lead to steady debt pay down (yet a separate category) and a multiple expansion on some sort of liquidity event, means that statistics like this are pretty much made up, because they can be defined any way the PE firm wants.

Since when is KKR so whiney anyway? From bad-ass barbarism to bitchiness is a long PR tumble. KKR should go back to raiding, looting, pillaging (I mean “operational improvement”), without remorse. There’s no law against financial engineering - the whining is all bruised ego at this point, or at least people trying to cling to low taxes on carry. You’re not saving the (cheerleader or the) world Kravis, or most business for that matter, get over it and be content with your billions, consistent returns, and impending golden shower of an IPO.

Financial Engineering at KKR? Never [Deal Journal]

Once fervently pro-deal-life, PE firms are increasingly finding that they support a fund manager’s right to choose. Scared by agit-prop that preached the dangers of back Park Avenue alley dealbortions, hanging up a deal (on the following hanger, pictured) used to be a rare event when cheap debt flowed freely from the banker’s teat and your baby could be flipped when he grew up to be big, deleveraged and strong.

The pro-deal-life movement warned of the reputational risks - you’re used goods, you’ll never be able to raise another little fund of your own knowing that you murdered a little return generator. With $300 billion of LBO debt ready to hit the market starting in September, there looks to be a cascade of partial birth dealbortions, following the example of none other than pro-fund-manager-choice pioneer Henry Kravis.

Deal Journal reports on the dirty little secret in Kravis’ past. When KKR was young and foolish and engaged in rampant unprotected dealmakinig during the mid-90s boom it got a little irresponsible and pledged $2.7 billion to Xerox’s baby girl Talegen Holdings, an insurance unit. When KKR sobered up, it realized that it made a horrible mistake, and took care of it, in what was the largest dealbortion ever up to that point. KKR has hardly suffered, proving that aborting a deal is quick, easy and painless, and may be the standard course of action for the remainder of the year.

Over-Rated! Why Walking Away from LBO Deals Isn’t So Bad [Deal Journal]

Those of you lucky enough to receive the private equity edition of Shouts and Murmurs, a gossipy newsletter featuring less than blind items about Apollo’s dirty little IT secrets and Stephen Schwarzman’s Spanish Harlem pied-à-terre are well-aware that KKR has seen better days. And by better days we mean days that don’t include an affiliate saying it wants to suspend payment on $5 billion worth of commercial paper, Blackstonian roadblocks in its quest to go public, crunches in funding for new M&A deals, and horribly unfunny—actually kind of bordering on racist—jokes made by Kravis around the water cooler that everyone has to pretend to laugh at, ‘cause he’s Kravis. Yes, to the untrained eye, things aren’t looking so good for the number 1 P.E. firm. Put on your KKR night vision goggles, though, and you’ll see that, to the contrary, everything is falling into place, exactly as they’ve planned (and also—suspicious stains).

After being unable to say no to the money being thrown at them by the banks, which those who are slightly more judgmental might use as evidence to say that KKR, Blackstone, et al. singlehandedly created the credit market mess, Kravis and his cronies have come up with plan to profit from the chaos. The firm, BusinessWeek reports, is in the process of raising at least $1 billion from investors for one of its existing hedge funds, in order to buy some of the $300 billion of junk bonds and high-yield loans that no one else wants. The plan is to get the debt that—and we know this is kind of touchy—KKR may or may not have created itself, on the cheap and then, when the market recovers, do that thing where you make a profit.

Analysts are telling Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co to scrap its plans for an initial public offering, saying tighter credit markets make the private equity firm a less attractive investment than it appeared to be just a few months ago.

We have certainly come a long way since last spring, when Henry Kravis was instructing the world about the “golden age” of private equity. (More recently, George Roberts, Kravis’s cousin and partner at KKR, told a German magazine that he expects returns on buyouts to “significantly” from where they’ve been. “The coming years will be harder, no question,” Roberts said according to reports.)

“They should absolutely, unequivocally, withdraw the IPO,” David Menlow, president of research firm IPOfinancial.com, tells Reuters.

Offerings from hedge funds and private equity shops pose a special dilemma for analysts at investment banks. Because they are involved in so many deals, private equity firms pay lots of fees to investment banks. And this can put pressure on analysts to give favorable ratings to the companies.

Covering hedge funds and private equity firms may also renew conflict-of-interest concerns Private equity-related fees, including those from advising and underwriting, accounted for $15.6 billion, or 20 percent of total global investment banking revenue last year, according to data provider Dealogic.

“The greatest challenge one faces as an equity analyst looking at Blackstone is the fact that they are one of the largest investment banking clients,” said Hintz. “It isn’t going to make you very popular if you put an ‘underperform’ on them.”

Not surprisingly, many of the analysts who are calling for KKR to pull its IPO work for independent firms that don’t suffer from fee-related conflicts.

KKR should pull its IPO: analysts [Reuters via Washington Post[
Formerly private equity firms irk stock analysts [Reuters]

Let’s see what two guys (Kurt Andersen and a friend, who asked requested his name be withheld) had to say about the matter:

* Guy New York contributor Kurt Andersen knows who works around private equity “snarls” when he says the name “Steve,” and “blames the current anti-private-equity spasm not on whiny anti-business liberals, but on Steve Schwarzman”

* “The fucking birthday party” (attribution to same “guy”)

* “Where no one gave a toast, by the way, not one” (same party, same guy)

* “We’re where we are right now because of the unbelievable egos of guys running the private-equity firms like Blackstone. They put big targets on their backs by what I consider stupid actions like throwing these big parties.” (same party, different guy—head of the National Venture Capital Association)

* “Ostentatious, churlish, megalomaniacal, tone-deaf—and a hypocritical dissembler to boot.” (Andersen, in cahoots with “guy”)

Alert the National Guard: Goldman has now been left out as a major underwriting playa in two—count ‘em, two—IPOs. First there was the Blackstone slap in the face, and now KKR is jumping on the “Don’t touch me there, Goldman” bandwagon. The same banks who lead the B-stone deal, Citigroup and Morgan Stanley, will be underwriting KKR’s as well.

What’s with 1-2 punch? When it happened the first time, many believed that GS and JP were working on another P.E. IPO, there was a non-compete and so on and so forth. Others wondered if Goldman’s own “aggressive pursuit of private-equity deals alienated Steve Schwarzman,” failing to take into consideration that a 5’6” tall man probably has pretty thick skin. But Blackstone’s in the past—what’s the deal with the second snub?

As Reuters points out, JPMorgan doesn’t have a private equity arm capable of competing with KKR, but Henry Kravis may “have beef with the bank,” re: First Data Corp.

Reuters reported in April that Henry Kravis and crew were fuming at the way JPMorgan handled its proposed takeover of First Data Corp. Long story short, JPMorgan owns a majority stake in a First Data joint venture. KKR tried to reassure JPMorgan that the JV was not under threat, but JPMorgan pushed back, offering to buy out First Data’s 49 percent stake in the venture or dissolve the partnership altogether, sources told Reuters. That didn’t sit well with Kravis, sources say.

So that’s JP Morgan, okay, but the lack of Goldman is still coming as a shock to those who believe Goldman Sachs rules the world and all of its inhabitants (really, though, Goldman does have the ability to make it rain). So what’s up there? Some theories:

• Goldman’s private equity arm competes directly with KKR for deals.
• As noted by the ‘Bookies, in March, Lloyd Blankfein said, “It’s impossible for us to be in every piece of business,” which is kind of like hearing your deity admit to being human and will thusly be chalked up to Blankfein being drunk, and struck from the record.
• Goldman has different looting and plundering strategies from those of KKR
• Goldman needs a nap
• There can only be one bald supermogul per IPO
• Goldman is advising Apollo, Citadel
• Goldman is the midst of a herpes outbreak
• Kravis just doesn’t think Goldman’s all that good at the private equity business
• Goldman has told KKR in the past that it would underwrite its IPO—when small mouth bass rule the world

Goldman, JPMorgan out in the cold for second private equity IPO [Reuters]
Underwriting Henry: Who’s In and Who’s Out [DealBook]
Goldman’s Hedge Fund Alumni Network [Deal Journal]

Damn the torpedoes! Full speed ahead!

Kohlberg Kravis Roberts have hired Morgan Stanley and Citigroup as underwriters for the potential public offering, CNBC’s Charlie Gasparino reported today. While warning that the plans were still tentative, Gasparino said that KKR would pursue an IPO that would compete in size with Blackstone’s.

There has been rumor and speculation that KKR would follow its rival Blackstone into the public markets since news of Blackstone’s offering broke months ago. But the last time we checked in, people were saying KKR had rejected going forward with an IPO. What’s more, some had wondered if tax legislation recently proposed in the US Senate would have a chilling effect on the urge to go public. The proposed bill would force private equity partnerships to pay taxes at the corporate rate if they go public, instead of treating profits as capital gains taxed when distributed to the partners under the current law.

But despite the potentially higher tax bills, Blackstone seems undeterred in their desire to sell shares. And investors are apparently undeterred in their desire to buy them. Talk that the higher tax bill could knock as much as 20% off the value of Blackstone has not been reflected in the appetite for the shares.

The success of Blackstone’s offering, which is expected to price tonight at the high end of its range and is reportedly oversubscribed by a factor of seven, has sparked talk of offerings coming from not only KKR, but Apollo, Carlyle and TPG. Gasparino says that Apollo is also leaning toward an IPO, something he has steadily maintained despite contrary reports in the New York Times.

There’s something of an irony in KKR following Blackstone in offering shares to the public. According to sources familiar with the genesis of the Blackstone IPO, the idea of going public was hatched after KKR succeeded in selling shares in one of its buyout funds to the public. At the time, Blackstone head Stephen Schwarzman publicly complained that the enormous offering had sucked the air out of the market for exchange traded private equity funds. Selling partnership shares of Blackstone was hatched as a new way of getting at the capital markets. So KKR may have inspired the very offering that they are now looking to imitate.

KKR May Launch IPO Later This Year: CNBC’s Gasparino [CNBC.com]

The video above comes from Texas Energy Future Holdings, the joint-venture partnership set up by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts and the Texas Pacific Group to fund their acquisition of the Texas energy company TXU. They also have a snappy, graphics laden website called TexasEnergyFuture.com.
We’ve run a lot of stories about the online public relations campaigns of Pirate Capital but until now haven’t touch on the phenomenon of political campaign style advertisements in the TXU deal.

We were wondering who was behind the turn to the public airwaves in order to win sympathy for the buyout. Unfortunately, we didn’t get very far in our inquiries with Texas Energy Future Holdings.

“The investors felt the need to let the public know about the transaction,” Jeff Eller told us twice when we asked about who planned the advertising campaign and how the idea was first hatched.

This morning’s Financial Times reports that Bonderman didn’t fare too well when confronted by Dallas mayor Laura Miller during a panel discussion at Milken Institute’s annual conference in Los Angeles.

In matters of substance, I would say that Mr Bonderman won on points. But Ms Miller and a member of the audience managed to rile him enough to concede a hostage to fortune. I concluded that the senior partners of private equity firms, who are under the spotlight around the world, still have much to learn about how to behave adroitly in public.

The turning moment of the discussion came, the FT reports, when Bonderman faced a question from an environmentally concerned audience member.

So why did he lose his cool when a self-righteous man from the audience demanded to know whether he felt an ethical responsibility to cease contributing to global warming? “You and others who are absolutists tend to be wrong almost always, in every event, at any time,” Mr Bonderman snapped back, promptly losing the audience’s sympathy.

It was an ingenue’s error. A smile lit up Ms Miller’s face and she said: “That was a really interesting answer.” No smart politician would have been caught losing his temper with a critic in that way, especially not on camera. As they have learned, in the age of YouTube, one reckless moment can doom them.

Like the male leads who clash with sparky women in Hollywood films, Mr Bonderman is charming but arrogant. I suspect that is true of the heads of other private equity firms. Who might not be with their stellar financial records? But it is no longer tactically wise to show it and the sooner they learn that the better it will be for them and their investors.

We hadn’t seen the video of the debate. So we asked Jeff Eller about it. Was it televised somewhere?

“It wasn’t a debate, it was a panel discussion, and to the best of our knowledge it wasn’t broadcast anywhere,” he said.

So was the “panel discussion” broadcast or not? Does anyone have the video? We haven’t been able to track it down anywhere. Send what you know to tips@dealbreaker.com.

Private equity needs more charm