Tuesday 24 November 2009

Private Equity Fun

(Prequel: I moseyed into a Borders shop yesterday to see if they'd roll out the red carpet on the off chance I was The Buyer they were looking for, but they didn't, so I quickly thumbed through Swallows and Amazons, made my excuses and left.)

Sequel: according to the BBC, things are looking a bit grim for Borders in the UK - they've stopped taking online orders and some publishers have stopped supplying them. The best bit of that article is right at the end:

... The Borders chain was originally owned by the US book giant of the same name but was sold in June 2007 to Risk Capital Partners. Risk Capital then sold it on to the private equity firm Valco earlier this year.

*ahem*

Borders Inc is a quoted US company.
Risk Capital Partners are a private equity firm.
Valco Capital is a private equity firm.

*/ahem*

As we well know, "private equity" is largely fuelled by [cheap] bank loans, and as we can see from the above example, is a bit of a pyramid scheme. It's a good job that our governments are now using taxpayers' money to bail out the banks' losses on all this, isn't it?

6 comments:

Lola said...

"It's a good job that our governments are now using taxpayers' money to bail out the banks' losses on all this, isn't it?" No.

Anonymous said...

Interesting that Risk Capital Partners sold it earlier this year. Wonder if they made a profit?

And Valco bought it. Wonder if they had a reason, if it was that close to the edge?

bayard said...

Never underestimate the power of incompetence.

James Higham said...

[Seethes]

dearieme said...

1) My wife the author quite liked Borders because they were much better organised than, for example, Waterstone (who still owe her money from 10 years ago).
2) Me, the buyer of CDs, I loathe Borders because you can't hear your sample CD section for the din of all the popkrap and rockshite tannoyed from their coffee bar.

Nick39 said...

When did the term "leveraged buy out" (or indeed "asset stripper") get replaced by the euphemism "private equity".

I mean, it's not like equity is a big part of the cash they raise.