Private equity has arrived when business journalists vie for the most outrageous play on "Barbarians at the Gate", the title of the book chronicling the famous buyout by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts of RJR Nabisco. Recent media focus has been on the arrival of the large offshore funds of Blackstone, Bain and KKR – Bain won a bidding war for Edcon, a retailer, with a R25 billion ($3.5 billion) bid (and recently obtained shareholder approval, against a slight headwind, for what will be the biggest leveraged buyout in South African history). Other overseas funds are also active: Citigroup and the CDC have set up a $200 million Africa fund, most of which is expected to be invested in South Africa; and Actis (a perennial investor in Africa) is involved in a R7.5 billion offer for Alexander Forbes, a financial services and risk adviser. These firms will all be affected by black economic empowerment, whether they know it now or not.
May 31 2007
