IT WAS A QUICK BUT BRUTAL skirmish between private-equity titans, but it said a lot about the state of the buyout business. On Sunday, Sept. 10, a team of four firms led by the Biackstone Group was putting the final touches on a 38 dollars -per-share bid for a major industrial company. All of a sudden, a rival quartet led by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. swooped in and suggested they might be willing to pay up to 42 dollars. Flush with cash, buyout firms have begun gobbling up companies everywhere in sight, often busting in on each other's deals. The surprising thing about this bidding war was the spoils: Austin (Tex.)-based Freescale Semiconductor Inc., one of die world's largest players in the semiconductor industry, hardly a province for buyout barons.
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