1 percent problems: Steven M. Davidoff digs into reports on private equity and finds an industry in transition: Private equity’s share of takeover deals more than halved last year compared against the first six months of 2007, and the industry is sitting on more than $900 billion in dry powder, which—along with cash-flush corporations eying strategic buys—is driving up acquisition prices. A weak IPO market, meanwhile, has lead to increased pass-the-baby sales, in which one PE firm sells to another. Smaller and mid-sized firms are being forced under, and bigger players are turning to emerging markets and other types of alternative investments (industry stalwart Blackstone (BX) now derives more than half its revenue from non-private equity investments).
Of two minds: Juergen Fitschen and Anshu Jain are set to take the helm of Deutsche Bank (DB) as co-CEOs tomorrow, combining corporate- (Herr Fitschen) and investment- (Herr Jain) experience in the executive suite as the bank sets to grapple with turmoil in the eurozone’s weaker economies and new regulations governing how much capital European banks keep on hand. Bloomberg has the details on the lesser-known Mr. Fitschen, including his ping pong-soccer-cricket prowess, but no word from those Italian anarchists on how they intend to divide their attention.
Face-flop: Facebook fell 9.6 percent yesterday as stock options on the company began trading, allowing investors to place negative bets on Zuck & Co. while placing less capital at risk. The most popular options had Facebook falling to below $25 by mid-July, The Wall Street Journal reports.
Henry Blodget reads the tea leaves and finds a solution to one part of Facebook’s mobile problem in recent remarks by Apple CEO Tim Cook.
Whither Europe: The EU proposed a “banking union” to share the burden of the region’s failing banks between the 17 countries that use the euro.
Spain is likely tap credit markets as it seeks to prop up nationalized lender Bankia SA, but the nation’s borrowing costs are near a euro-era peak, and in the neighborhood of where Greece and Ireland sought international bailouts.
Italian borrowing costs are also rising.
Dewey’s next chapter: Dewey & LeBoeuf and its former partners could be facing years of litigation after filing for Chapter 11 on Monday. That’s in part to a federal court ruling last week finding that fees generated by cases started at defunct Coudert Brothers belonged to that law firm’s bankruptcy estate, not to the firms to which Coudert’s former partners had taken the cases.
Heidi Moore turns her keen eye on Dewey’s collapse.
RIMM job: Research In Motion reported losses for the second consecutive quarter and announced that it had hired JPMorgan and RBC Capital Markets to advise on strategic options, including the potential sale of parts of the BlackBerry-maker’s business.
Golden whistle: The former Countrywide manager whose fraud suit helped state attorneys general reach a $25 billion settlement with the nation’s five largest mortgage servicers earlier this year received a $14.5 million whistle-blower award.