"kkr pays more than $837 million in fees!"

can´wait when all the recent buyers want to exit the market........(probably all at the same time....). good luck to all the bond buyers and creditors.........

irgendwann müssen alle diese investments versiclbert werden. dürfte interessant werden. zumal oftv alle zur gleichen zeit das dann evtl. "sinkende" schiff verlassen wollen. man kann den bondinvestoren und kreditgebern nur viel glück wünschen......

Jan. 4 (Bloomberg) -- Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. is set to pay out more than $837 million in fees to investment banks for deals in 2006, more than any other private equity firm, in an unprecedented year for leveraged buyouts.

Henry Kravis and George Roberts' firm spent three times more in the first 11 months of 2006 on fees to securities firms than in the whole of 2005, ..... KKR spent the money on takeover advice, arranging loans and initial public offerings for companies in Europe and the U.S.

LBO firms logged a record $699 billion of deals last year, according to data compiled by Bloomberg, fueled by a combination of record fundraising and cheap debt, which they use to finance purchases. The industry, which accounts for about a quarter of all takeover activity, is poised to pay $11 billion in fees for the year, Freeman says....

Spending Power
...Private equity firms have about $409 billion in cash to invest and can raise another $1.2 trillion in non-investment grade bonds and loans, according to Morgan Stanley. (as long as the debt market is willing to finance this mania / solange die kreditmärkte weiter willig sind diese halbrecherischen deals zu finanzieren)

New York-based Blackstone Group LP's takeover of Equity Office Properties Trust http://immobilienblasen.blogspot.com/2006/11/reits-going-gaga-blackstone-to-buy.html capped a record $326 billion of takeovers announced by private equity firms in the U.S. in 2006, .... The firms announced $216 billion of European purchases, ....

Mergers Advice
...Wall Street firms typically charge clients about 0.6 percent of the value of a deal for their takeover advice. They earn an average fee of about 6 percent of the value of IPO in the U.S., and about 2.3 percent in Europe, according to Bloomberg data.

Banks can profit from buyouts over a number of years:

Morgan Stanley advised Texas Pacific Group and CVC Capital Partners on their 1.72 billion-pound ($3.4 billion) takeover of U.K. retailer Debenhams Plc in 2003.

Morgan Stanley also received fees for arranging 1.3 billion pounds of loans to fund the deal.

The fees didn't stop there: In 2005, the bank helped arrange new loans the private equity firms used to pay themselves a dividend, and in May the following year Morgan Stanley shared about 20 million pounds in IPO fees for taking Debenhams public again./i´m sure the next taking private is in the making....:-) könnte mir gut vorstellen das die nächste übernahme bereits in der mache ist...:-)