Wednesday, January 27, 2010

The Berkshire Partners

During the early part of the 1980s, Berkshire Partners was established by a group of five individuals with a goal to create a private equity firm that is based on hard work, successful relationships, analysis, as well as the collective participation of all individuals involved in the dealings. This founding vision has been preserved and continues to influence the firm’s many successful operations.

Led by a set of responsible private equity investors, Berkshire Partners adheres to its mission of producing investment returns that constantly places them at the top quartile of competitive but analogous private investment firms. The group also aims to provide the management teams for several portfolio companies they handle with all the right resources necessary to grasp the business’ full potential. In line with these, Berkshire Partners consistently strives to uphold the highest of ethical standards by operating in an honest and fair manner. It formulates its decisions based upon selected critical factors like analytical thoroughness, open debate, as well as logical judgments. The firm maintains its commendable culture of teamwork, detailed and harmonized decision making while continuously supporting the development of its staff and encouraging each colleague to constantly search for balance in life with regards to their commitments and responsibilities for their families and loved ones. The firm also pushes for community service and other external interests. All these statements are symbolic of the firm’s philosophy. Holding on to these values help the firm attract and secure managers for their portfolio companies and the entire Berkshire staff.

Operating as an active investor, the Berkshire Partners firm takes on the responsibility to create well researched investment decisions that would represent their investors. The entire Berkshire team works towards attaining well grounded decisions in order to provide only the best services possible for their management teams.






http://www.berkshirepartners.com/role.shtml

Monday, January 25, 2010

Silver Lake’s Portfolio

Formed in 1999, Silver Lake Partners, a Menlo Park, California-headquartered firm, has earned a named for itself as the leading private equity resource for the technology business. The firm is continuously seeking out more mature technology companies that are able to rule over their sectors, mostly those investing between $100 and $500 million. In addition to this, the firm has operating offices in London, New York and San Francisco.

Silver Lake’s holdings involve various big-time firms in the technology industry, mostly coming from its December 2000 connection with the equity recapitalization of web-based brokerage Datek. Investing for Datek eventually resulted to a stake in Ameritrade, which merged with Datek in September of 2002 and further merged with TD Warehouse USA. As a result of this, the company became TD Ameritrade.

Silver Lake Partners’ participation in NASDAQ (also known as the National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations) is likewise a result of its Datek investment. This came about when Datek’s Island ECN was put up as an independent business. By September 2002, Island was fused together with the Instinet Group’s trading network called Instinet. The network was retained when NASDAQ bought the Instinet’s sister network INET. Later, in a deal that closed in February of 2007, Nomura Holdings purchased Instinet.

A number of the many investments of Silver Lake Partners include these business leaders:

• Serena,
• Network General,
• Business Objects,
• SunGard,
• Flextronics,
• Avago,
• Seagate,
• Thomson,
• UGS (presently known as software company Siemens PLM Software),
• Gartner,
• NXP and IPC.


Through TPG Capital from Texas Pacific Group, Silver Lake just added Sabre Holdings and Avaya to its portfolio companies.

The firm employed former Compaq and MCI chief executive officer Michael Capellas in October of 2007 as one of its senior advisors.

Friday, January 22, 2010

Meryll Lynch

Meryll Lynch & Co is an international financial services firm that provides investment banking and advisory services, asset management, wealth management, insurance as well as capital markets services. Based in the thriving city of New York, the firm has grown big enough to occupy the entire 34 stories of the Four World Financial Center in Manhattan.

The firm was founded by Charles Merrill and his friend Edmund Lynch way back in the early 1900s. During its early years, the firm made a number of successful investments, including its acquisition of the Pathé Exchange.

In 1940, the firm joined with two other firms, namely the E.A. Pierce & Co and Cassatt & Co. After the merger, the firm became known as Meryll Lynch, E.A. Pierce, and Cassatt. The following year, Meryll Lynch became the first company to ever publish an annual fiscal report on Wall Street.

The firm was officially incorporated after Edmund Lynch’s death in 1952 and a few years later, Meryll Lynch successfully turned itself into the largest securities firm in the world. In 1958, the firm’s name was changed into Merill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith and at the same time, became a significant member of the board of the New York Stock Exchange.

In 2008, the firm was acquired by the Bank of America, one of the world’s biggest financial institutions. As a result of the merger, it has become the largest brokerage firm worldwide. It has also become a leading provider of international corporate and investment banking services that includes global high yield debt, commercial lending, global equity, as well as global M&A. As a team, Meryll Lynch and the Bank of America have become a global leader in retail brokerage, wealth management, and private banking.

The firm now carries the name Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

Monday, January 11, 2010

Thomas H. Lee

Thomas H. Lee is a Boston, Massachusetts based private equity firm that deals with identification and acquisition of substantial ownership positions in large companies that are growth oriented. They work on these companies in the hopes of securing a venue where they can add strategic and managerial expertise that allows them to create value for their business partners. Considered one of the most successful private equity firms, Thomas Lee was able to raise an approximate of $22 billion worth of equity capital while placing investments in more than a hundred business establishments, with a cumulative purchase price of over $125 billion. In addition to that, the firm also continuously seeks to build more companies that possess a lasting value while generating superior returns for their fellow operating partners and investors.

This leading equity firm focuses on companies that are able to capitalize on certain key competitive advantages in order to boost revenue as well as to increase free cash flow by means of market growth, share gains, market consolidation and through product line expansion. A few of the targeted companies’ identifiable strengths include dominant market share positions, well recognized brand names, unique product features, manufacturing, as well as other cost advantages.

Thomas Lee emphasizes the importance of free cash flow as the main gauge of profitability and that it has a considerable capability in terms of developing the business of its portfolio companies. The group works together with its portfolio companies in order to enhance the growth of free cash flow by means of developing their market potential and product lines, as well as in establishing effective systems, increasing resources, pursuing acquisitions and changing managements. Thomas H. Lee is also in the lookout for the ability to advance core operations through increased efficiencies. The firm’s investment philosophy and growth oriented strategy underscores the general appreciation in the enterprise value of a purchased or acquired company as compared to the mere repayment of acquisition debts.

Tuesday, January 5, 2010

CVC Capital Partners

CVC Capital Partners is one of today’s leading global private equity and investment advisory firms. Established way back in 1981, the firm now maintains a network of 19 offices all over Asia and Europe, as well as in certain parts of the United States, in addition to its main headquarters in Luxembourg.

CVC stands distinctively in the midst of the private equity industry. This is mainly due to the extensiveness of its office network, as well as to the length of time it has been active in several countries, combined with the depth of the knowledge of its investment professionals. CVC Capital Partners is armed with the capability to combine and deliver vast cross border resources in order to obtain high quality companies and help them realize their full potential. The firm’s local knowledge and expertise emphasizes the success that it has attained throughout the 27 years of its existence.

The firm places more of its focus towards establishing businesses over the long term, while typically holding investments for five years or more. The firm’s funds possess a variety of portfolio investments. CVC Capital Partners collaborates effectively with the management teams of their portfolio companies, as well as with industrial advisors and appointed non-executive directors, in order to develop strategies that would enhance their portfolio company’s overall performance while leaving it to realize a lasting value.

The firm believes that through an effective combination of ownership and management, the company becomes more capable of creating benefits for the whole of its stakeholders, employees, customers, suppliers, as well as to the wider community.

CVC Capital Partners’ investors receive distributions from the gains produced from the firm’s various investments that include public and corporate pension plans, insurance companies, financial institutions, university endowments, and even through investments from individuals.

Monday, January 4, 2010

The Carlyle Group

With a total of more than $84.5 billion funds under its management, the Carlyle Group has become one of the largest private equity firms worldwide. The group takes on a global vision and combines it with local insight that relies on a top-flight team of more than 495 investment executives and professionals. These personnel operate in offices scattered in over 20 countries, including Europe, North America, Asia, the Middle East, Australia, and Latin America. These placements give the Carlyle Group a greater global foothold.

The Carlyle Group focuses its investments on certain sectors. These include automotive and transportation, aerospace and defense, consumer and retail, financial services, energy and power, healthcare, infrastructure, industrial, real estate, technology and business services, as well as media and telecommunications.

In the mercurial and competitive field of the industry it specializes in, the Carlyle Group has a decisive edge over its competitors in that it can skillfully utilize the local insight of its investment executives and professionals. As a result of the Carlyle Group’s extensive collaboration with its investment disciplines that originates from deal sourcing, the firm now has a broader view of more opportunities in investments in addition to a more profound level of expertise.

The firm’s team of investment professionals and executives includes a total of 181 MBA holders, 31 JD holders, as well as six PhD/MD holders coming from the most prestigious universities around the world. The Carlyle Group stands out from other private equity firms due to its global presence and vast knowledge regarding the local market.

Headquartered in Washington, DC and having a total of more than 890 employees, the Carlyle Group manages a total of 64 funds across 20 countries. Its operations adhere to the firm’s conservative investment philosophy, which pushes the firm to strive for consistency in all its undertakings.