Tom 《经济学人》：杠杆收购为什么陷入困境?
原文标题：
Leveraged buy-out
Private pain
The buy-out business may struggle in a changed economic climate
Why leveraged buy-outs are in trouble
This downturn won’t be like the last one
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Held in february 2007, the 60th-birthday celebrations of Stephen Schwarzman, a private-equity magnate, captured the spirit of an age. Nothing distils the hubris of Manhattan on the eve of a financial crisis like Rod Stewart belting out “Maggie May” to a fizz-drinking crowd in Hermès ties. Within two years Mr Schwarzman’s firm, Blackstone, had lost more than 80% of its market value. Yet the striking thing is that the private-equity industry, including Blackstone, soon bounced back to enjoy a gargantuan boom. Today private equity is again on the ropes. But shifting investment patterns and higher interest rates mean it is unlikely to enjoy such a miraculous recovery.
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As central banks raise interest rates and shrink their balance-sheets, markets are reeling. This year equities have suffered the worst sell-off in a generation. Things are also messy in debt markets, particularly the risky “high-yield” corners where private-equity funds gather ammunition for deals. Junk-bond yields have reached 9%.
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All this raises questions about one of the biggest investing fashions of the past two decades. Private-equity assets have more than tripled over the past decade to reach $4.6trn. Desperate for higher returns as interest rates fell, almost all pension funds, endowments, sovereign-wealth investors and life insurers piled into private assets. It is commonplace for a pension fund to have 10% of its holdings in this asset class.
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Now a crunch is coming, in two ways. First, the deals done at sky-high valuations look a lot less clever. Higher costs and slowing economic growth will squeeze the profits of private-equity-owned firms. With share prices lower it becomes harder to sell or float firms at attractive valuations. In contrast with the last boom, buy-out funds have loaded up on tech firms that are facing a bigger valuation hit than the market overall. It will take months for funds to mark down their valuations and for investors to get a clear view of the damage, but it is possible that funds raised since 2018 will struggle to return any profits of note.
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The second part of the crunch relates to future investments. The industry is sitting on $1.3trn of “dry powder” and investors are still increasing their allocations. Yet whether the business model works in the new macroeconomic environment is uncertain. Buy-outs, which involve buying firms using debt, can generate returns in three ways: through rising valuations, high leverage or improving operational performance. Today two of the three levers are impaired. As interest rates rise, reversing a long-term downward trend, it seems unlikely that asset prices will bounce back. Meanwhile, higher borrowing costs may be here to stay. Leverage is the lifeblood of buy-outs: the calculations have fundamentally shifted.
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Private-equity managers will struggle to find a playbook from the industry’s 40-year history. The first cycle, in the 1980s, saw a band of pioneers capitalise on the inefficiencies of lumbering public corporations. The music stopped when credit markets, epitomised by the junk-bond king Michael Milken, crashed. Today there are few large, cheaply valued companies that are ripe for this kind of shock-therapy. Private equity recovered rapidly after the global financial crisis; by early 2011, business was back. But the most significant factor was central banks pushing interest rates to zero. Now some private-equity tycoons may hope to compensate by improving firms’ operating performance. Yet it is an open secret that many are speculators, not managers.
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Who will suffer most? The first losses will be incurred by investment bankers who underwrote buy-out debt at frothy prices. But that will be bonus-crushing, not system-shaking. Disclosure is patchy but, by our crude estimates, the five biggest American investment banks have up to $90bn of corporate loans held for short-term purposes. Even if they were worth nothing this would knock only about 12% off the banks’ total core capital. The ultimate investors face a bigger headache: they are betting on high returns from private equity to fulfil the promises they have made to retirees and other beneficiaries.
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You stole my heart and that’s what really hurts
Best positioned of all are the private-equity firms themselves. Since the 1980s they have diversified. They often have property, credit and infrastructure businesses that are comparable in size to their buy-out activities. These areas may do well during inflationary periods. The industry’s pioneers have largely retired. One who has stayed the course, Mr Schwarzman, today manages a vastly different firm, with diversified assets under management of $915bn. For some people, the party never ends.
（恭喜读完，本篇英语词汇量769左右）
原文出自：2022年7月2日《经济学人》Leaders版块
精读笔记来源于：自由英语之路
本文翻译整理: Irene
本文编辑校对: Irene
仅供个人英语学习交流使用。
【补充资料】
（来自于网络）
杠杆收购Leveraged Buyout
(LBO)又称融资并购、举债经营收购，是一种企业金融手段。指公司或个体利用收购目标的资产作为债务抵押，收购此公司的策略。杠杆收购的主体一般是专业的金融投资公司，投资公司收购目标企业的目的是以合适的价钱买下公司，通过经营使公司增值，并通过财务杠杆增加投资收益。通常投资公司只出小部分的钱，资金大部分来自银行抵押借款、机构借款和发行垃圾债券（高利率高风险债券），由被收购公司的资产和未来现金流量及收益作担保并用来还本付息。
如果收购成功并取得预期效益，贷款者不能分享公司资产升值所带来的收益（除非有债转股协议）。在操作过程中可能要先安排过桥贷款（bridge loan）作为短期融资，然后通过举债（借债或借钱）完成收购。杠杆收购在国外往往是由被收购企业发行大量的垃圾债券，成立一个股权高度集中、财务结构高杠杆性的新公司。在中国由于垃圾债券尚未兴起，收购者大都是用被收购公司的股权作质押向银行借贷来完成收购的。
斯蒂芬·施瓦茨曼（苏世民）Stephen Schwarzman
曾是福布斯(forbes)评出的世界最有影响力的人。他一手创建的黑石集团是世界上最大的私募股权基金公司之一，在其建立的22年时间内保持着30%以上的年平均增长率。如今已成为覆盖私募基金、房地产、资产管理和财务咨询的综合性金融品牌。而在其首尝“公开上市”螃蟹的过程中，拿到了中国国家外汇投资公司(cic)30亿美元的投资。
私募股权
，即私募股权投资（Private Equity，简称PE），是指投资于非上市股权，或者上市公司非公开交易股权的一种投资方式 。从投资方式角度看，私募股权投资是指通过私募形式对私有企业，即非上市企业进行的权益性投资，在交易实施过程中附带考虑了将来的退出机制，即通过上市、并购或管理层回购等方式，出售持股获利。私募是为有钱人设计的产品。
《Maggie May》
是Rod Stewart演唱的歌曲，收录在2006年2月2日《'70s Gold》专辑中，其中有一句歌词You stole my heart and that’s what really hurt。洛德·斯蒂沃特曾经是世界上最出色的摇滚歌手之一，以独特的形象与嗓音闻名于音乐界。同时也是最有才华的词曲作者之一，是二十世纪六十年代中期的英国入侵浪潮之后的标志性人物之一。
垃圾债券Junk bond
亦称“高息债券”，是美国公司发行的一种非投资级的债券。美国的债券通常分为政府债券、“投资级”公司债券和“非投资级”的“垃圾债券”三种。美国95%的公司发行的债券都是后者。通常由一些规模较小的新行业，或者信贷关系较短的公司发行。但也有一些大公司发行这种债券，它们的债券原本属于投资级，但由于公司出现财政困难或整个行业衰退等原因，其债券被贬为“垃圾债券”。若经营情况好转，“垃圾债券”也可反弹为投资级债券。通常，“垃圾债券”的利率比美国政府债券的利率高2—4厘。
迈克尔·米尔肯
是创造了金融新天地的“垃圾债券大王”，《华尔街时报》认定的“最伟大的金融思想家”号称自J.P摩根以来美国金融界最有影响力的风云人物。垃圾债券之王米尔肯独具投资天才，从零开始打造了属于自己的垃圾债券王国，积极促成了美国企业界及金融世界的变革。却在1990年因为同样的原因被永远逐出美国证券市场。法庭认其6项罪名：掩盖股票头寸、帮助委托人逃税、隐藏会计记录等，这些罪名都没有先例，以前也没有任何人因为这些罪名而受指控。米尔肯被判处10年监禁、赔偿和罚款11亿美元，并且禁止他从事证券业。庭审期间，他的主要客户在发行量极大的《华尔街日报》、《纽约时报》上花巨资刊出整版广告，写着“我们相信你”。
【重点句子】
（3个）
This year equities have suffered the worst sell-off in a generation.
今年一代人经历了最严重的股票抛售。
Leverage is the lifeblood of buy-outs: the calculations have fundamentally shifted.
杠杆是收购的命脉：计算方法已经发生了根本性的变化。
Yet it is an open secret that many are speculators, not managers.
然而，许多人是投机者，而不是管理者，这是一个公开的秘密。
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