Harman International is being bought out.

[Beat_Dominator 5,000+ posts]

Makers of JBL and Infinity car products.

http://www.harman.com/press/pdf/harman-kkr.pdf

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Click to read more...

 

[Beat_Dominator 5,000+ posts]

">The Wall Street Journal has had a number of articles describing the

>tactics of these private equity buy-out firms. First, they load the

>acquired company with huge debt, which they then take for themselves

>as a "dividend," often amounting to a significant fraction of the

>company value. This provides a large instant return.

Wouldn't argue with this, and KKR are the original "barbarians at

the gate" -- you should read the UK press concerning KKR's ongoing

bid to acquire Boots the Chemist -- but the situation is more complex.

Primedia, which owns Stereophile, was created out of a number of

publishing companies that had been acquired by KKR and KKR remains

the primary stockholder. The debt to KKR has been serviced not so

much by asset stripping, as your comments would suggest, but by

selling off chunks of the company when a high sale price was viable,

which in turn means continuing to run those divisions efficiently

with continued investment.

Those who might be concerned that Stereophile and Harman will now be

owned by the same corporate parent should note that Primedia is

about to sell its entire magazine division -- Stereophile, Motor

Trend, Automobile, Home Theater, Shutterbug, etc -- so any potential

conflict of interest will not be an issue (not that it would have

been, given what from my level appears to be KKR's "hands-off"

strategy concerning the day-to-day operations of its investments).

John Atkinson

Editor, Stereophile"

 

[ngsm13 5,000+ posts]

Too bad me has no stocks. I'd get teh monies.

nG

 

[Flipx99 5,000+ posts]

Old news...

kkr had rumors for a couple days.