Blackstone’s leveraged buy-out of Equity Office Properties is a record breaker. Blackstone paid $23 billion for the company and assumed $16 billion of debt in a $39 billion transaction that eclipses the $25.7 billion plus $6 billion in assumed debt that Kohlberg Kravis Roberts shelled out for RJR Nabisco back in 1989 and the $21.3 billion plus $11.7 billion in debt that a consortium of funds paid for HCA last year.
Does such a huge, leveraged deal for a commercial property company flash bright red warning signals of a market top? Certainly the combination carries unfortunate echoes from those Barbarians at the Gates days.
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