💰All Hail Private Equity💰

Private Equity Rules the Roost (Long Following the Money)

So, like, private equity is apparently a big deal. Who knew?

Readers of PETITION are very familiar with the growing influence, and impact of, private equity. We wouldn’t have juicy dramatic bankruptcies like Toys R Us, Nine West and others to write about without leveraged buyouts, excessive leverage, management fees, and dividend recapitalizations. Private equity is big M&A business. Private equity is also big bankruptcy business. And it just gets bigger and bigger. On both fronts.

The American Lawyer recently wrote:

Private equity is pushing past its pre-recession heights and it is not expected to slow down. Mergermarket states that the value of private equity deals struck in the first half of 2018 set a record. PricewaterhouseCoopers expects that the assets under management in the private equity industry will more than double from $4.7 trillion in 2016 to $10.2 trillion in 2025.

With twice as much dry powder to spend on deals, private equity firms will play a large role in determining the financial winners and losers of the Am Law 100 over the next five-plus years. It amounts to a power shift from traditional Wall Street banking clients and their preferred, so-called white-shoe firms to those other outfits that advise hard-charging private equity leaders.

Indeed, PE deal flow through the first half of the year was up 2% compared to 1H 2017:

In August, the American Investment Council noted that there was $353 billion of dry powder leading into 2018. No wonder mega-deals like Refinitiv and Envision Healthcare are getting done. But, more to the point, big private equity is leading to big biglaw business, big league. Say that five times fast.

The American Lawyer continues:

It is hard to find law firm managing partners who don’t acknowledge the attraction of private equity clients. Their deals act as a lure, catching work for a variety of practice groups: tax, M&A, finance and employee benefits. And lawyers often end up handling legal work for the very companies they help private equity holders buy. Then, of course, there is always the sale of that business. A single private equity deal for one of the big buyout firms can generate fees ranging from $1 million to $10 million, sources say.

“It’s kind of like there’s a perfect storm taking all those things into consideration that makes private equity a big driver in the success of many firms, and an aspirational growth priority in many more firms,” says Kent Zimmermann, who does law firm strategy consulting at The Zeughauser Group.

Judging by league tables that track deals (somewhat imperfectly, as they are self-reported by firms), Kirkland has a leading position in the practice. According to Mergermarket, the firm handled 1,184 private equity deals from 2013 through this June. Latham is closest with 609. Ropes & Gray handled 323, while Simpson Thacher signed up 319.

Hey! What about “catching work” for the restructuring practice groups? Why is restructuring always the red-headed step child? Plenty of restructuring work has been thrown off by large private equity clients. And Kirkland has dominated there, too.

Which would also help explain Kirkland’s tremendous growth in New York. Per Crain’s New York Business:

In just three years, Kirkland & Ellis has grown massively. The company, ranked 12th on the 2015 Crain's list of New York's largest law firms, has increased its local lawyer count by 61% to climb into the No. 4 spot.

Much of that growth has come in its corporate and securities practice, where Kirkland's attorney count has nearly doubled in three years. The 110-year-old firm's expansion in this area is by design, said Peter Zeughauser, who chairs the Zeughauser Group legal consultancy.

"There aren't many firms like Kirkland that are so focused on strategy," Zeughauser said. "Their strategy is three-pronged: private equity, complex litigation and restructuring. New York is the heart of these industries, and Kirkland has built a lot of momentum by having everyone row in the same direction. They've been able to substantially outperform the market in terms of revenue and profit."

Kirkland's revenue grew by 19.4% last year, according to The American Lawyer, a particularly remarkable increase, given that it was previously $2.7 billion. Zeughauser has heard that a growth rate exceeding 25% is in the cards for this year. The firm declined to comment on whether that prediction will hold, but any further expansion beyond the $3 billion threshold will put Kirkland's performance beyond the reach of most competitors.

Zeughauser, the consultant featured in both articles, thinks all of this Kirkland success is going to lead to law firm consolidation. Kirkland has been pulling top PE lawyers away from other firms. To keep up, he says, other firms will need to join forces — especially if they want to retain and/or draw top PE talent at salaries comparable to Kirkland. We’re getting PTSD flashbacks to the Dewey Leboeuf collapse.

As for restructuring? This growth applies there too — regardless of whether these outlets want to acknowledge it. Word is that 40+ first year associates started in Kirkland’s bankruptcy group recently. That’s a lot of mouths to feed. Fortunately, PE portfolio companies don’t appear to stop going bankrupt anytime soon. Kirkland’s bankruptcy market share, therefore, isn’t going anywhere. Except, maybe,…up.

That is a scary proposition for the competition. And those who don’t feast at Kirkland’s table — whether that means financial advisors or…gulp…judges.

*****

Apropos, on Monday, Massachusetts-based Rocket Software, “a global technology provider and leader in developing and delivering enterprise modernization and optimization solutions,” announced a transaction pursuant to which Bain Capital Private Equity is acquiring a majority stake in the company at a valuation of $2b.

Dechert LLP represented Rocket Software in the deal. Who had the private equity buyer? Well, Kirkland & Ellis, of course.

We can’t wait to see what the terms of the debt on the transaction look like.

*****

Speaking of Nine West, Kirkland & Ellis and power dynamics, we’d be remiss if we didn’t point out that a potential fight in the Nine West case has legs. Back in May, in “⚡️’Independent’ Directors Under Attack⚡️,” we noted that the Nine West official committee of unsecured creditors’ was pursuing efforts to potentially pierce the independent director narrative (a la Payless Shoesource) and go after the debtor’s private equity sponsor. We wrote:

In other words, Akin Gump is pushing back against the company’s and the directors’ proposed subjugation of its committee responsibility. They are pushing back on directors’ poor and drawn-out management of the process; they are underscoring an inherent conflict; they are highlighting how directors know how their bread is buttered. Put simply: it is awfully hard for a director to call out a private equity shop or a law firm when he/she is dependent on both for the next board seat. For the next paycheck.

Query whether Akin continues to push hard on this. (The hearing on the DIP was adjourned.)

The industry would stand to benefit if they did.

Well, on Monday, counsel to the Nine West committee, Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP, filed a motion under seal (Docket 717) seeking standing to prosecute certain claims on behalf of the Nine West estate arising out of the leveraged buyout of Jones Inc. and related transactions by Sycamore Partners Management L.P. This motion is the culmination of a multi-month process of discovery, including a review of 108,000 documents. Accompanying the motion was a 42-page declaration (Docket 719) from an Akin partner which was redacted and therefore shows f*ck-all and really irritates the hell out of us. As we always say, bankruptcy is an inherently transparent process…except when it isn’t. Which is often. Creditors of the estate, therefore, are victims of an information dislocation here as they cannot weigh the strength of the committee’s arguments in real time. Lovely.

What do we know? We know that — if Akin’s $1.72mm(!!) fee application for the month of August (Docket 705) is any indication — the committee’s opposition will cost the estate. Clearly, it will be getting paid for its efforts here. Indeed, THREE restructuring partners…yes, THREE, billed a considerable amount of time to the case in August (good summer guys?), each at a rate of over $1k/hour (nevermind litigation partners, etc.). Who knew that a task like “Review and revise chart re: debt holdings” could take so much time?🤔

That’s a $10k chart. That chart better be AI-powered and hurl stats and figures at the Judge in augmented reality to justify the fees it took to put together (it’s a good thing it’s redacted, we suppose).

Speaking of fees it takes to put something together, this is ludicrous:

The debtor has to pay committee counsel $100k for it to put together an application to get paid? For heaven’s sake. Even committee members should be up in arms about that.

And people wonder why clients are reluctant to file for bankruptcy.

*****

Speaking of independent directors, one other note…on the fallacy of the “independent” director in bankruptcy. Yesterday, October 9, Sears Holdings Corporation ($SHLD)announced that it had appointed a new independent director to its board. To us, this raised two obvious questions: how many boards can one human being reasonably sit on and add real value? At what point does a director run into the law of diminishing returns? Last we checked, it’s impossible to scale a single person.

But we may have been off the mark. One PETITION reader emailed us and asked:

The question you want to be asking is "what sham transaction that probably benefits insiders is the independent director being appointed to bless" or "what sham transaction that benefitted insiders is the independent director being appointed to "investigate" and find nothing untoward with?"

Those are good questions. Something tells us we’re about to find out. And soon.

Something also tells us that its no coincidence that the rise of the “independent fiduciary” directly correlates to the rise of fees in bankruptcy.

Tell us we’re wrong: petition@petition11.com.

What to Make of the Credit Cycle. Part 14.1. (Long Div Recaps; Long Blackstone; Short Refinitiv)

On Sunday in “What to Make of the Credit Cycle. Part 14. (Long Blackstone; Short Refinitiv),” we provided our colorful take on the fervent (and 2x over-subscribed) demand for the $13.5 billion Thomson Reuters’ Refinitiv loan and bond issuance. Our take was framed from the perspective of the high yield trader and was meant to provide some insight into the machinations that occur behind the scenes at a high yield fund. But what does this deal mean for private equity firms and leveraged buyouts?

Spoiler alert: all good things.

Reuters wrote:

The rousing results are likely to boost secondary pricing and will intensify pressure on primary pricing and other terms and conditions, after investors won a reprieve in the summer from aggressive transactions amid a surge in supply.

The SMi100, an index that tracks the 100 most widely held loans, stands at 98.73, the highest point since February. About 42% of US loans are now trading above par, according to LPC data. Average US high-yield bonds, meanwhile, have rallied sharply over the past couple of weeks to Treasuries plus 325bp, or just 3bp off post-crisis lows, according to ICE BAML data. (emphasis added)

Private equity firms likely smell blood in the water. More from Reuters:

The successes could also herald a more aggressive underwriting era as private equity firms squeeze arranging banks harder, which could open the door to another round of opportunistic repricings, refinancings and dividend recapitalizations that allow sponsors to take advantage of weak documentation.

“The next stuff behind the scenes is going to be punchy,” the global debt head said.

Ah, dividend recapitalizations. We miss those.

Reuters continued:

While the results are undeniably good for private equity firms, they may not be good for investors who are increasingly nervous about aggressive deals as an economic downturn draws closer at the end of an unusually long economic cycle.

With Refinitiv, Akzo and Envision, technical factors – primarily huge demand and a small visible pipeline of deals – overwhelmed any specific credit concerns and fears about aggressive documentation that allow sponsors to extract dividends quickly or make transformative asset sales and acquisitions without investors’ consent.

The three jumbo loans, each of which are capital-stretching, represent half of the forward calendar, which is already looking thinner. Worries about future supply encouraged investors to join the big, liquid deals in droves, particularly as new money carve-outs have previously proved to be particularly profitable.

All of this continues to worry financial regulators who are watching the fervor play out. The Bank of International Settlements recently warned that, per Bloomberg:

…likely distress among indebted borrowers may spread into the wider economy as central banks raise interest rates. It’s not just the total debt, but the fact that investors seem less and less concerned about protecting themselves against losses, the BIS said.

Yes, indeed. The return of covenant-lite debt has been well documented.

And the borrower-favorable market has been well documented.

“When there’s tons of liquidity, lenders don’t value covenants and they’re willing to lend at very high leverage values,” said Douglas Diamond, a finance professor at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. “If you get a negative shock after that, you’ve now got a very vulnerable sector. The crisis won’t happen tomorrow but the vulnerability is there.”

The BIS report identified other concerns, including the prospect of fire sales by loan funds if ratings downgrades push some of their investments into junk. Diamond said there’s potential for such leveraged mutual funds to cause havoc.

“The borrowing that they do is usually from a bank,” he said in an interview. “They buy a loan from a bank, they borrow money from the bank to buy the loan from the bank -- not necessarily the same bank. So the risk would ultimately get back to bank balance sheets.”

But high yield mutual funds aren’t the only vehicles driving this meshugas. Don’t forget about CLOs, which, as we discussed in “💥The CLO Market is Going Bananas💥,” are in full-on volume mode. Relating to factors driving demand for borrower-friendly paper, Alexandra Scaggs wrote in Barron’s:

Another is the robust demand for floating-rate debt such as leveraged loans to protect against Federal Reserve rate increases. Funds investing in loans have seen $14.4 billion of inflows this year, according to EPFR, following on $16 billion of inflows in 2017 and $11 billion in 2016. It is not clear the scramble for floating-rate securities will stop any time soon, as the Fed is expected to raise rates four times in the next 12 months, according to Bloomberg data. The demand for loans has also been fueled by the rise of the market for collateralized loan obligations, securitized products that hold pools of loans as collateral and pay their investors the interest collected from those loans in order of tranche quality.

For the uninitiated, here is an excellent recently published primer from S&P Global Ratings on how CLOs function. Pour yourself a cup of coffee and give it a perusal. It’s worth it. CLO dynamics will definitely play into the next cycle.

*****

In a separate segment on Sunday, we snarked about over-the-transom strategic-alternatives pitch deck” and banker boredom. Distressed and high yield investors are, no doubt, equally if not more bored. Aside from Q1, 2018 has been a barren wasteland for restructuring and bankruptcy professionals looking for things to do. Long bitching come bonus time.

But all of this flippant high yield activity has to come home to roost at some point. The question, as always, remains “when?”

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What to Make of the Credit Cycle. Part 14. Refinitiv Edition.

Long Blackstone. Short Market Timing.

🎶 Sing it with us now: “Yield, baby, yield.” 🎼

Let’s pretend for a second that you’re a trader “sitting on the desk” of a fund with a high yield mandate. Limited partners have given your Portfolio Manager millions upon millions (if not billions) of dollars to get access to — and active management of — high yield debt. They expect your PM and the team to deploy that capital. That’s what you said you’d do when you were out pounding the pavement fundraising. They don’t want to pay you whatever your management fee is for you to simply be sitting in cash, waiting on the sidelines counting your “dry powder.” So when a big issuance goes out to market, you’ve got to make your move. The pressure is on.

The first order of business it to simply make sure that you even get in the room. You’d better be on your game. There’s a lot of appetite for yield these days, so you better be working those phones, dialing up that “left lead” clown you suffered beers with a few weeks back with the hope of getting an opportunity to put in an allocation. You’re dialing and dialing and hoping that he doesn’t remember that your PM passed on — much to your chagrin — the last 4 or 5 looks that clown — let’s call him Krusty — gave you. Fingers crossed.

Your PM is pacing behind you. It’s creeping you out. Angst fills the room. The desk lawyer is running around screaming bloody hell about some covenants or something. Maybe it was a lack thereof. You’re not sure. You don’t care, damn it. Those LPs want that money deployed so you’re damn well gonna deploy it. Forget about covenants. Forget about risk. That lawyer can pound sand. Literally nobody cares. Because you and your team are super savvy. Surely you’ll be able to dump these turds of loans and bonds before the market speaks and the debt trades down. Or before all liquidity dries up. Either way, you’ll get out. You’re sure of it. Market timing is your jam.

You finally get through. Krusty says “what’s your number?” You turn to your PM and without much time to really crunch numbers — after all, the yield, the potential discount, the Euro piece vs. the US piece all keep changing — he shrugs and throws out a hefty number. And then does the Sam Cassell dance. You smile. There’s momentarily silence on the other end. Finally, Krusty says he’ll call you back; he seems wildly unimpressed. Your PM shrinks.

You know this same scene is playing out on trading desks all over Wall Street time and time again when there’s a juicy new issuance.

And so does Blackstone. So does Refinitiv.

This week the high yield universe worked itself into a tizzy as Refinitiv priced and issued $13.5 billion of debt to finance Blackstone’s multi-billion dollar ~55% takeover of Thomson Reuters’ Financial & Risk division. Why is this a big deal? Well, in part, because its a big deal. And the lack of (high yield) supply has led to pent up demand. Pent up demand can lead to some interesting compromises.

On September 8, the International Financing Review wrote:

The debt package is divided into US$8bn of loans and US$5.5bn of high-yield bonds. Those debts, combined with separate payment-in-kind notes (with a 14.5% coupon), will result in annual interest payments of US$880m at current price talk. A separate US$750m revolving credit facility will also need servicing.

“The banks had no choice but to price it attractively and it’ll be interesting to see how it goes,” a loan investor in London said. (emphasis added).

Furthermore,

The deal is being marketed with leverage of 4.25 times secured and 5.25 times unsecured, based on adjusted Ebitda of US$2.5bn, which includes US$650m of cost savings from the business’s reported Ebitda of US$1.9bn.

Wait. Take a step back. Cost savings? What cost savings? Blackstone is claiming that they can take $650mm out of the business thereby driving the leverage ratio down. That’s quite a gamble for investors to take. Particularly combined with loose interpretations of EBITDA and considerable add-backs.

The International Financing Review quoted some investors:

A portfolio manager in London said that he had calculated that leverage for the deal is “nearer six and seven times”.

“It’s very late cycle. I don’t really like it when you see a deal with this order of magnitude of projected cost savings as you really don’t know if and when they will be realised,” he said.

“It will be a bit of a test for the market given the size of the deal. But Blackstone and its partners have a good reputation and deep pockets.”

Moody’s and Fitch put leverage between 6.1x and 7.6x.

Covenant Review was nonplussed about the bond protections. It wrote:

“The notes are being marketed with extremely defective sponsor-style covenants riddled with flaws and loopholes that reflect the worst excesses of covenant erosion over the last two years.”

Tell us how you really feel.

Reuters channeled the ghosts of TXU:

The return of big buyouts to the leveraged finance market has rekindled memories of the 2006 and 2007 bad old days of risky underwriting and excessive debt.

So, in the end, how DID the issuance go?

The Wall Street Journal wrote:

One of the largest-ever sales of speculative-grade debt was completed with ease on Tuesday, a sign of the favorable environment for U.S. borrowers at a time of robust economic growth and strong demand from investors.

The $13.5 billion sale—which a Blackstone Group LP-led investor group is using to acquire a 55% stake in a Thomson Reuters Corp. data business called Refinitiv—comprised $9.25 billion of loans and $4.25 billion of secured and unsecured bonds, with different pieces denominated in U.S. dollars and euros.

Including a $750 million revolving credit line, the bond-and-loan deal amounted to the ninth-largest leveraged financing on record in the U.S. and Europe, and was the fourth-largest since the financial crisis, according to LCD, a unit of S&P Global Market Intelligence.

Said another way, demand was so high for the issuance that — aside from upsizing the loan component by $1.25 billion (with a corresponding bond decrease) and a reduction of future permitted debt incurrence — the company was able to offer bond investors LOWER interest rates at par, despite the fact that both Moody’s and S&P Global Ratings rated the issuance near the bottom of the ratings spectrum. Read: thanks to fervent demand, the banks were able to price a wee bit less aggressively than originally planned. That includes the loans: the company was also able to decrease the original guided discount (“OID”) for investors.

Per Bloomberg, orders…

“…total[ed] double the $13.5 billion of bonds and loans it needed to raise. The scale of the response was spurred on by a ravenous bid from collateralized loan obligations and other investors amid fears that there may be fewer new deals going into the fourth quarter."

🎶 One more time: “Yield, baby, yield.” 🎼

So here you had a 2x over-subscription despite some troubling characteristics:

High leverage wasn’t the only way Refinitiv has tested investors. Under the proposed terms of its bonds, the company could pay dividends to its owners even if it came under severe financial distress, a provision that the research firm Covenant Review described as “wildly off market.”

Back to International Financing Review quoting a high yield investor:

“It got to the point where the only thing I liked about the (Refinitiv) deal was the yield. And I’ve learned after 25 years in this business, that’s not enough.”

Among his concerns were business challenges that the Refinitiv business has already faced from competitors like Bloomberg and FactSet. But Blackstone’s ambitious cost-savings target also made him leery.

“When you look at the investment thesis of the sponsor, it’s very much about achieving cost synergies,” said the investor.

“The synergies they forecast are based on their story that they know how to do this better as sponsors than the corporate parent.”

Reasonable minds can debate the merits and reality of sponsor-driven cost “synergies.” But let’s be honest. Nobody is investing in this capital structure because they are whole-hearted endorsers of the Blackstone-promulgated cost-reduction narrative.

“Among the rationales for investors is confidence in the economy - it’s looking good right now, it’s looking good next year, and the belief that they can sell before the quality of the debt deteriorates,” Christina Padgett, a senior vice-president at Moody’s, told IFR.

In other words, market timing is their jam.