biz.yahoo.com
If you Wonder?
Charter Communications (NasdaqNM:CHTR - News), pondering whether they would be better off taking themselves private -- and off the market. "The field is wide open," says Stephen A. Schwarzman, president and CEO of the Blackstone Group, an investment bank with $14.5 billion for private-equity investments.
Then you Wait?
At the same time, the failure of acquisition-fueled growth strategies of such '90s players as Tyco and WorldCom have made many execs queasy. "Today, you get whacked on Wall Street if you announce a large acquisition," says Mark A. Ernst, CEO of H&R Block Inc. (NYSE:HRB - News), which is adopting the "lower-risk proposition" of buying back its own shares. Indeed, Gregg Polle, managing director and co-head of the M&A Group at Salomon Smith Barney, argues that "company-defining" deals will be avoided until their stock prices rise and until target companies get through the next audit cycle, perhaps by next spring.
Then you Win?
Some buyout firms -- even those attached to publicly traded banks -- have begun to pounce on distressed assets. One Equity Partners, which manages $3.5 billion in capital for Bank One Corp. (NYSE:ONE - News), has been on a tear lately, for example. It paid just $255 million on July 31 to help buy Polaroid Corp. out of bankruptcy, a price so low that Derek Jarrett, a former vice-president for international operations at Polaroid, says he was "horrified" at the sale. One Equity Partners, trolling for more such bargains, declined to comment |
