Funny how Jewish money and influence (AIPAC) isn't a problem, huh, readers?
Of course, as the Israelis are sucking us dry, the Arabs are propping us up and bailing us out!
"Money trail leads to the Middle East"
"by Beth Healy, Globe Staff | May 2, 2008
The deal makers who raise cash to buy companies like Dunkin' Donuts, Toys "R" Us, and Hilton Hotels are following the money a lot farther these days - all the way to the Middle East.
Just since March, partners from major US private equity firms including Boston's Bain Capital and Thomas H. Lee Partners have boarded jets to Abu Dhabi, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and other destinations in the region to court wealthy investors. For all but a few, this is brand new territory. And it's paying off: Billions of dollars from the Middle East have poured into these funds over the past six months, and more is being pledged.
Call it the march of capitalism. The same foreign investors who have provided capital for the likes of Citigroup Inc. and Merrill Lynch & Co. amid the credit crisis - sparking financial and political concerns - are becoming stakeholders in a far less regulated realm of US finance.
"They're smart investors, and they can write big checks," said Philip Cooper, a former Goldman Sachs Group partner who ran private equity at the Wall Street firm and now manages hedge funds in Lincoln. "This is the way capital markets are supposed to work."
And the GLOBALIST PLAN, too! What a coincidence!!
These deep-pocketed investors are mainly sovereign wealth funds, which manage the wealth of their governments. Middle East sovereign funds represent four of the nine largest in the world, controlling $1.5 trillion generated by oil revenues. And they are becoming increasingly sophisticated as they grow, according to people who do business with them, spreading portions of their portfolios into private equity and hedge funds.
Private equity firms use funds they raise from large investors, plus borrowed money, to buy companies and resell them - usually after cutting costs, selling off parts, or pouring capital into a particular line of the business.
In interviews, The Boston Globe learned that Middle East investors accounted for about 10 percent of Thomas H. Lee's $10 billion fund raised last year; 6 percent of the $10.4 billion fund that Advent International of Boston announced last month; and 5 percent of the $17 billion fund just launched by Apax Partners, a London firm with a US presence, to name just a few.
No one tracks the total sum invested in US private equity by sovereign funds in the Middle East, but consultants and investment professionals estimated it's about $20 billion. And that figure is expected to grow dramatically.
"The pace of development in the Middle East is breathtaking," said Bain Capital managing director and Boston Celtics co-owner Stephen Pagliuca, who recently visited Saudi Arabia. The burgeoning wealth is more than a boon to buyout firms, he suggested. "It's a really good thing that's happening," Pagliuca said. "A growing middle class will help make the region more stable."
Still, there is sensitivity around these emerging business ties in a part of the world many Americans are uneasy about.
Except ISRAEL, right?
Most private equity firms won't discuss the fact that they have Middle East investors. Even the Carlyle Group, a Washington private equity firm that did business there long before most and now has an office in Dubai, bought out members of the Bin Laden family from its funds after 9/11, to avoid controversy.
And to COVER UP their connections to the CIA asset bin-Laden!!!!
More recently, when Citi and Merrill sold minority stakes to sovereign wealth funds in Abu Dhabi and Kuwait, Congress held hearings on the investments. The reaction to these and other deals offended some in the Middle East.
At a US Senate banking committee hearing last week, Christopher Dodd, the Connecticut Democrat who chairs the panel, said Congress and regulators should watch the "impact of sovereign wealth funds on the safety and soundness of the US financial system, and on the security of critical US industries."
Many professional investors say the United States has created the situation in which it now finds itself. The country has become a bargain basement for foreign investors because of the weak dollar and the subprime mortgage crisis that hurt the economy and damaged major US financial institutions. At the same time, America's steady diet of costly oil has helped enrich the very Middle Eastern nations that are now buying US assets on the cheap.
Terrorist nations, right?
Last I knew, we aren't getting Iranian oil.
The Israelis are, but AmeriKa isn't!
And talk about WRECKING an ECONOMY!
I guess that's why Carlyle moved to Dubai, huh?
GLOBALISTS!!!!
"They're buying us with our own foolishness," Cooper, the hedge fund manager, said.
Private equity is, in many ways, a perfect match for Middle Eastern investors. For one thing the returns - averaging 8.3 percent annually over 10 years and 12.8 percent over 20 years - are historically better than those in oil or stocks.
Beyond the returns, private equity funds offer an ingrained culture of secrecy that appeals to many clients. These firms rarely talk about their clients, no matter where they're from, and typically disclose few details about deals, practices, or profits.
Drosten Fisher, a consultant at Monitor Group in Boston who has lived in Saudi Arabia, said private equity firms may have a cultural edge. "They're quite discreet organizations," he said. "They're less sort of corporate, and more about relationships. That fits quite well with the Arab family business culture."
Bader Mohammad Al-Sa'ad, managing director of the Kuwait Investment Authority, which manages $250 billion, said he expects money from the region to keep flowing into US funds, even with the recent slowdown in buyout deals. "With this crisis, we're going to see private equity firms going back to the basics," and perhaps using less leverage, he said in an interview. "We'll see a lot of opportunity."
Many US financiers, no strangers to extraordinary sums of money, are agog at the wealth they see in the Middle East.
It's not just Dubai, a glittering financial hub that owns 20 percent of the Nasdaq Stock Market and has Starbucks on street corners. The Saudis are building six sprawling cities and an endowed university. The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority is the biggest sovereign wealth fund in the world, with $875 billion under management; 300 executives convened at the Emirates Palace hotel there in April for a conference just on private equity.
Think about that the next time you are gassing up, readers!!!
Yup, think about all your money going overseas to build up other nations while
Exxon/Mobil, Shell and BP rake down record profits, too!!!
Seems like the ONLY ONE GETTING FUCKED is YOU, shit-chewing 'murkn!!!!
All of this is worlds away from buyout executives' well-worn schmoozing paths. Normally, they're wooing endowment managers at Harvard and Yale, and visiting the heads of US pension funds. Now they're dining with Saudi princes, too.
In recent weeks, Stephen A. Schwarzman, chief executive of Blackstone Group in New York, could be seen strolling through the Four Seasons Hotel in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Thomas H. Lee Partners copresident Scott Schoen was in Abu Dhabi and Kuwait. Carlyle chief David Rubenstein also was in Abu Dhabi.
Some private equity groups are even selling ownership stakes in their own firms, a big leap from simply taking on Middle East investors in their funds.
Carlyle in September sold 7.5 percent of itself to a fund owned by the Abu Dhabi government for $1.35 billion. Leon Black in November sold 9 percent of his Apollo Management to the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, for $650 million. These are stakes in the firms themselves, not just their investment funds.
Not everyone is happy about these funds' new minority owners. The California legislature has taken up a bill that would bar Calpers, the $242 billion state pension fund, and the teachers' pension fund from investing in private equity firms like Apollo, Carlyle, or Blackstone, which have taken on sovereign wealth funds as owners. Political sentiment, it would seem, lags business reality.
Kevin Landry, chairman of the Boston private equity firm TA Associates, first raised money in the Middle East back in 1982. One overriding factor drew Landry to the region, he said: "You want deep-pocketed limited investors who are going to be in the game for a long time."
Any mention of Israeli influence on American policy in that article?
Didn't think so!
