The Tryon Street Journal

The credit crunch has hit private equity hard… so much so that Cerberus is willing to pay $100 million to back away from the United Rentals deal without consequence.  Deals are getting more and more difficult to finance because investors aren’t keen on high-leverage corporate debt like they were a year ago.  But now the fun begins… we get to see who can still do deals and who has just been riding the wave.  I’m interested to see how many deals firms like Carlyle and Blackstone can do in this environment, and if the delta between expected returns and cost of capital is still high enough to get them done.  Stay tuned…