Monday, February 15, 2010

Throwing Billions Against the Wall

Sometimes I think private equity firms just throw stuff up against the wall and see what sticks. They protect themselves from complete wipeout (or anything close to it) from any deals that go bad, but they load themselves to participate big time on the upside.

Alan Prest of PEU Report emails:
I ran across something interesting in WellPoint's SEC filings.

BlackRock purchased over 39 million shares of WellPoint on 12-31-09. They spent $2.3 billion for 8.5% of the company. Over a week later BlackRock defaulted on Stuyvesant Town.

I did a piece on the default and added the above note as an update.

And then,of course, there are those government deals. Alan continues:
I don't know how much of BlackRock's profits came from their Treasury work under various rescue programs. That would interesting to find out.

3 comments:

  1. BlackRock purchased 20 million shares of Simon Property on 12-31-09. For $1.6 billion they purchased over 7% of Simon.

    A week later they defaulted on Stuy Town.

    On the board of Simon Property was Birch Bayh (he retired in 2009). His son announced he won't run for Senate reelection. How many companies will line up to employ Evan or appoint him to their board?

    If Jeb Bush became a sought after board member during his brother's dumbling reign, Evan should get ample attention.

    ReplyDelete
  2. A possible bidder for BlackRock's defaulted Stuyvesant Town is Wilbur Ross, partner with The Carlyle Group on BankUnited. It's a very small circle.

    ReplyDelete
  3. NYT Dealbook did a piece on the future of Stuy Town.

    http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/17/bidders-undeterred-by-stuy-town-foreclosure/#comments

    ReplyDelete