Caveat investor

摘要

Take an underperforming company. Add some generous helpings of debt, a few spoonfuls of management incentives and trim all the fat. Leave to cook for five years and you have a feast of profits. That has been the recipe for private-equity groups during the past 20 years. Private equity has been so successful that it is getting ever bigger and bolder (see pages 81-83). Rarely a day goes by without some new multi-billion-dollar scheme. On the table now are J. Sainsbury, a British retailer, and Equity Office Properties Trust, an American property group-which, valued at some $40 billion, would be the biggest deal ever.