BMC software borrowed $750 million via one of the riskiest forms of debt, payment-in-kind (PIK) notes, where, if push comes to shove, BMC can chose to pay interest not with cash but with more of the same debt.
The amount it owes gets larger, as its chances of survival shrivel. Instead of defaulting, the company will simply hand the lender more paper that’s increasingly worthless.BMC promptly forwarded the $750 million to its owners, a group of PE firms let by Bain Capital that had acquired BMC only seven months earlier.
Time is of the essence. Platinum Equity, which had acquired Volvo’s rental car division, waited only a week after closing the deal before sucking $262 million out that the company had obtained by issuing PIK debt.
So far this year, these already overleveraged companies have issued nearly $21 billion in junk-rated debt for the purpose of paying special dividends to the PE firms that own them — the most since the bubble of 2007, before it all blew up spectacularly.Of that, $3.5 billion were these reeking PIK notes.When a default occurs, the PE firms have the cash, and the lenders get stuck with largely worthless paper.
Check It Out
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Tech Mega-Buyouts Edge Toward Comeback as BMC, CA Plot Deal – Bloomberg
Don’t miss this little fact: Bain and Golden Gate helped themselves to their own $750 million dividend from BMC a year after buying the company.
Four years after Blackstone Group LP and Silver Lake Management battled to take Dell Inc. private, buyout firms are back in the market for big leveraged technology deals.
BMC Software Inc., owned by Bain Capital and Golden Gate Capital, and CA Inc. are considering a potential deal that would see the software companies combine as part of a transaction to take CA private, according to people familiar with the process. CA shares rose as much as 16 percent Tuesday, valuing the New York-based company at more than $15 billion.
If a deal goes ahead, and if it’s structured as a leveraged buyout by the private equity firms followed by a combination with BMC, it would be the biggest LBO of a tech company since Silver Lake and Michael Dell won the fight to buy Dell in 2013 in a transaction valued at almost $25 billion.
Source: Tech Mega-Buyouts Edge Toward Comeback as BMC, CA Plot Deal – Bloomberg
Swarm of 464 earthquakes hits Yellowstone National Park | Daily Mail Online
It’s low risk but low-risk doesn’t generate clicks. 🙂
Hundreds of earthquakes have hit Yellowstone National Park in the space of a week, according to experts.
A total of 464 quakes have been recorded over the past week at Yellowstone, which sits above one of the world’s most dangerous supervolcanoes.
This is the highest number of earthquakes at the park within a single week in the past five years.The recent activity has raised fears that the supervolcano is about to blow.
If it were to erupt, the Yellowstone supervolcano would be one thousand times as powerful as the 1980 Mount St Helens eruption, experts claim – although they say the risk is ‘low’.
Source: Swarm of 464 earthquakes hits Yellowstone National Park | Daily Mail Online
A Massive Lake Of Molten Carbon The Size Of Mexico Was Just Discovered Under The US
The Yellowstone volcano has a massive chamber the size of Mexico.
A recent scientific discovery has drastically changed our view of the global carbon cycle and identified a new significant risk. Researchers have discovered a giant lake or reservoir made up of molten carbon sitting below the western US.
The molten carbon (primarily in the form of carbonate) reservoir could drastically and immediately change the global climate for over a decade if it were to be released. Thankfully there is little risk in the near future of this happening. The carbon sits 217 miles beneath the surface of the Earth in the upper mantle and has no immediate pathway to the surface. In total the lake covers approximately 700,000 square miles, approximately the size of Mexico. This has redefined how much carbon scientists believe sits locked away in the Earth’s mantle and its interaction with surface and atmospheric carbon.
Source: A Massive Lake Of Molten Carbon The Size Of Mexico Was Just Discovered Under The US
Greed and Debt: The True Story of Mitt Romney and Bain Capital – Rolling Stone
And this is where we get to the hypocrisy at the heart of Mitt Romney. Everyone knows that he is fantastically rich, having scored great success, the legend goes, as a “turnaround specialist,” a shrewd financial operator who revived moribund companies as a high-priced consultant for a storied Wall Street private equity firm. But what most voters don’t know is the way Mitt Romney actually made his fortune: by borrowing vast sums of money that other people were forced to pay back. This is the plain, stark reality that has somehow eluded America’s top political journalists for two consecutive presidential campaigns: Mitt Romney is one of the greatest and most irresponsible debt creators of all time. In the past few decades, in fact, Romney has piled more debt onto more unsuspecting companies, written more gigantic checks that other people have to cover, than perhaps all but a handful of people on planet Earth.
Source: Greed and Debt: The True Story of Mitt Romney and Bain Capital – Rolling Stone
Route to Air Travel Discomfort Starts on Wall Street – The New York Times
When an unlucky passenger was violently dragged off a full United Airlines flight in Chicago in April, setting off a public-relations nightmare for the company, the blame naturally fell on the cabin crew, the police and eventually airline executives.But ultimately, the episode was set in motion elsewhere — on Wall Street.Relentless pressure on corporate America is creating an increasingly Dickensian experience for many consumers as companies focus on maximizing profit. And nowhere is the trend as stark as in the airline industry, whose service is delivered in an aluminum tube packed with up to four different classes, cheek by jowl, 35,000 feet in the air.
Source: Route to Air Travel Discomfort Starts on Wall Street – The New York Times
BBC – Capital – Why you should manage your energy, not your time
Interesting approach.
Many of us will have had that sense of there just not being enough hours in the day to do everything we need to do. Tasks that should take only a few minutes can stretch into hours, all while other work mounts up.
For most, the solution is to work later into the evening or even over the weekend, which leaves many of us feeling exhausted, stressed and burned out. But what if working less were the key to getting more done?
Source: BBC – Capital – Why you should manage your energy, not your time
Is North Carolina the Future of American Politics? – The New York Times
Welcome to North Carolina circa 2017, where all the passions and pathologies of American politics writ large are played out writ small — and with even more intensity. Ever since 2010, when Republicans seized control of the General Assembly for the first time in a century, and especially since 2012, when they took the governor’s mansion, the state’s politics have been haywire. “There’s been a bigger and quicker shift to the right here than in any other state in the country,” says Rob Christensen, a longtime political writer for The News and Observer newspaper in Raleigh.
Source: Is North Carolina the Future of American Politics? – The New York Times
D.C. police issue warrant for 12 on Turkish security team in May brawl – The Washington Post
DC Police are looking for these thugs. With any luck they’ll never set foot in America again.
Authorities in the District said Thursday that they have criminally charged a dozen members of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s security team who authorities say attacked protesters outside the ambassador’s residence in May.
At a news conference, D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) and Police Chief Peter Newsham explained the charges against the suspects, who are all believed to be in Turkey.
“I condemn this attack,” Bowser said, vowing that the city will “defend the First Amendment.”
The charges come nearly a month after the clashes at Sheridan Circle along Massachusetts Avenue’s Embassy Row, outside the residence of the Turkish ambassador. Police and other officials say various members of the visiting Erdogan’s security team, some of them armed, attacked a group protesting his regime as police struggled to restore order and bystanders recorded the scene with phones.
Source: D.C. police issue warrant for 12 on Turkish security team in May brawl – The Washington Post
As early as 2007, analysis demonstrated that 400-V dc distribution had advantages; Now there’s a way to implement it.
Is DC power the wave of the future for computing environments?
Power distribution in data centers used to emulate the architecture of old telephone central offices. A “rectifier” would step down and rectify the ac from the power line and use it to charge banks of batteries that provided an unregulated 48 V dc, which was distributed around the facility to run the telephone equipment in the racks.
Since at least 2007, data-center engineers have been talking about distributing 400 V dc (sometimes 380 V). Data centers are bigger and use a lot more power than telco central offices. At a minimum, higher voltage distribution would mean lower I2R losses and/or thinner power-distribution cables.