Old Trader

Wall Street Breakfast: Must-Know News

Several days ago, I wrote an instablog post in which I made some suggestions for dealing with the employment crisis the US is currently experiencing, and my number one point was much expanded assistance to small/medium business, rather than throwing more money at/into "too big to fail" institutions.

GS's efforts on behalf of small business made me think its like dressing the shark from the movie "Jaws" in a Santa outfit, and thinking it was suddenly all "warm and cuddley".

Back to Basics for Private Equity

Aside from capital raising by some of the financials, the IPO market is, moribund, so that pretty much kills one exit strategy for PE and VC firms, leaving only strategic acquisitions as the only way to exit, at this point, and possibly for some time into the future. It does seem like there's a lot of focus on distressed debt funds, though..(no shortage of that around...). At least we won't be seeing those "flip" deals...(in and out in a year...sometimes less...usually after a huge dividend being paid, financed by a huge amount of debt).