In 2007, the IUF published a A Workers' Guide to Private Equity, a 36 page A5 brochure, aimed at IUF affiliates and trade unions and their members around the world. Available in English, French, German, Spanish and Swedish, it remains an indispensable guide for trade unionists. Click here for more details and to order your copies.Three months before becoming the world's largest hotelier (by rooms) with the 2007 leveraged buyout of Hilton Hotels Corporation, the private equity Blackstone Group unloaded the Extended Stay chain for USD 8 billion. It was a hell of a deal for Blackstone, who picked up the chain in 2004 for just under USD 2 billion.
Continue reading "Blackstone (& Friends) Buy Extended Stay Hotels - This Time at Half Price" »
How many surprises can still be in store at Accor, the French-based hotel and prepaid services transnational? In 2009, when private equity investors Eurazeo and Colony Capital boosted their stake to 30%, it was described as a "vote of confidence" in existing management.
Continue reading "Demerging Accor - Less Than the Sum of the Parts?" »
Blackstone Chairman Stephen Schwarzman, speaking from Davos, Switzerland, has warned Australia of a foreign investment "chill" following that country's efforts to collect taxes on a windfall deal from private equity giant TPG.
Continue reading "Blackmailing the Taxman, from Davos to Sydney" »
Barring any last-minute surprises, Kraft, the world's second-largest food company, will swallow UK-based Cadbury in a deal which in its reliance on debt bears a family resemblance to...a leveraged buyout.
Private equity operator Blackstone, according to the Wall Street Journal of October 29, "has good reason to be nervous about Hilton." They're not alone; the enormous leverage taken on to finance the buyout at the height of the debt bubble now weighs heavily on the more than one hundred thousand Hilton employees around the world, on the wider financial system, and on the US Treasury, and therefore US taxpayers. Here's why.
Continue reading "Blackstone's Hilton Woes Will Weigh on Workers" »
While defaults rise and growing numbers of private-equity backed companies continue their march to bankruptcy (though not necessarily losses for the funds which marched them there), the "creative" financial devices which helped fuel the buyout boom appear poised for a comeback.
Continue reading "Recap Rerun: Short Memories, Missing Regulation" »
Private equity funds hoping to cash in on the stock market to return money to hungry investors through IPOs (initial stock offerings) may have hit a brick wall. What does this mean for workers?
Microfinance, small business loans to the urban and rural poor, was originally conceived as a tool for poverty alleviation. It has become big business - and private equity has rushed in. The Wall Street Journal of August 13 reports that in India, private equity funds among other investors have "poured billions of dollars over the past few years into microfinance world-wide", using methods reminiscent of the aggressive, predatory lending which spawned the subprime debt bubble in the US. In India today, the article reports, "Some poor neighborhoods are being 'carpet-bombed' with loans" bearing interest of 24% to 39%.
Continue reading "The Next Debt Bubble? PE Fuels Subprime Microfinance in India" »
New research from Bloomberg makes clear the magnitude of the private equity losses suffered by US employee pension funds in the period 2000-2008.
Continue reading "US Pension Funds' Private Equity Disaster: Lost on the Road to Alphaville" »