“Discipline is the foundation upon which all success is built.  Lack of discipline inevitably leads to failure.”                                                                                                                                  —Jim Rohn

“If you don’t think you can do it, who will?  You control the most important tool in success, your mind.”                                                                                                                               — Jeffrey Gitomer

“You cannot change your destination overnight, but you can change your direction overnight.”                                                                                                                                                     —Jim Rohn

“Develop a passion for learning. If you do, you will never cease to grow.”               — Anthony J. D’Angelo

“If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.”                                                         — John Quincy Adams

“Believe and act as if it were impossible to fail.” — Charles F. Kettering

“The key factor that will determine your financial future is not the economy;  the key factor is your philosophy.”                                                          —Jim Rohn

Your attitude determines the state of the world you live in.

It is the foundation for every success and every failure you have had and will have.

It will make you or break you.  Your attitude controls your life.

But the good news? You control your attitude.                                                                                                      — Unknown

“Profits are better than wages. Wages make you a living; profits make you a fortune.”                                —Jim Rohn

“Nothing will work unless you do.”                                                                                                                   –  John Wooden

“Let others lead small lives, but not you.  Let others argue over small things, but not you.

Let others cry over small hurts, but not you.

Let others leave their futures in someone else’s hands, but not you.”                                                               –  Jim Rohn

“Never settle for anything less than your best.”                                                                                                  –  Brian Tracy

“When you kill time, you kill your opportunities for success.”                                                                   — Denis Waitley

“When you come to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on.”                                            — Franklin D. Roosevelt

“It is the set of the sails, not the direction of the wind, that determines which way we will go.”                 —Jim Rohn

“It is funny about life: If you refuse to accept anything but the very best,
you will very often get it.”                                                                                                                  — W. Somerset Maugham

01
Blackstone is expecting to hold a final close for its seventh global PE fund by the end of the year after hitting its $17.5bn hard cap. – Oct 27, 2015
Blackstone Capital Partners Fundraising
02
KKR is expected to exceed the $8.0bn raised by its last North American-focused fund with the launch of KKR North America Fund XII. – Oct 28, 2015
KKR North America Fundraising
03
Ares Management is back in the market with its fifth flagship PE fund, which is targeting $6.5bn. – Oct 26, 2015
Ares Private Equity Fundraising
04
Harvest Partners is planning to raise up to $2.2bn for its seventh fund, potentially making it double the size of its predecessor. – Oct 30, 2015
Harvest Partners Fundraising
05
The Canada Pension Plan Investment Board and BC Partners agreed to invest 30% of the equity in Altice’s $17.7bn agreement for Cablevision. – Oct 27, 2015
BC Partners Fundraising • Canada Pension Plan Investment Board
06
Starwood Capital Group has agreed to buy 72 properties from US real estate company Equity Residential for about $5.37bn. – Oct 26, 2015
Starwood Capital Global Hospitality
07
Intercontinental Exchange agreed to buy Interactive Data Corp. for about $5.2bn from Silver Lake and Warburg Pincus, scoring a 2.5x return. – Oct 26, 2015
Warburg Pincus Private Equity Fundraising • Silver Lake Partners
08
IBM is nearing a $2.0bn deal to acquire the digital and data assets of The Weather Channel, a PE-backed weather news broadcaster. – Oct 28, 2015
Bain Capital North America • Blackstone Capital Partners Fundraising
09
TPG Capital is looking to offload chemical distribution company Nexeo Solutions in a deal worth approximately $2.0bn, including debt. – Oct 30, 2015
TPG Partners Fundraising
10
Health insurer UnitedHealth Group is nearing a deal to buy Helios, which is owned by Kelso & Company and Stone Point Capital for $1.6bn. – Oct 29, 2015
Kelso & Company Fundraising • Stone Point Capital

Source: Palico

Advent International building a $12B Global Buyout Fund

Ardlan is seeking 2 Billion Euros to buy private debt

Carlyle has raised $1B for a Japanese buyout fund

Vista Equity Partners entering market with between $750M & $1B

and has also purchased Solera which is valued at $6.5B

Terra Firma has sold Tank-Rast valued at 3.9B Euros

Amgen has purchased Dezima Pharma for $1.5B

Siris Capital Group has offered to buy out Premier Global Services for $1B

Altec has purchased Cablevision for $17.7B

THE 15 PE FUNDRAISINGS THAT INTEREST INVESTORS THE MOST are listed in Palico’s latest Data Snapshot. There are “over 2,600 private equity vehicles raising capital for classic funds, co-investments and deal-by-deal structures,” but “out of the 57 high-profile vehicles each currently seeking more than $2.5 billion from investors,” only one makes Palico’s 15 most-viewed list: Warburg Pincus Private Equity Fund XII, “the second biggest vehicle in fundraising mode today, with a target of $12 billion.”

Depending on who you talk to, one might think we are starring the bottom of the barrel of the stock market from a long way up.  Those that have been around for more than thirty years have trimmed their holdings to prepare for the greatest discount sale of equities that this world has ever seen.  It is the newbies that are hurt the most, because they were the last ones to jump in.  The warning bells have been ringing for a good six months, but only the veteran investors would know this.  Now you can see how the global economy is so intertwined and how a mega-consumer of commodities like China was ten years ago can affect economies of developing countries when it slows it’s importing of the raw materials they export.  Lack of demand softens the price of that commodity and producers start cutting back on production, workers are let go, wages and tax revenues shrink, governments’ burden of welfare grows if they are stable enough to have social safety nets.  Developing and developed countries alike are affected, but in different ways.  Those that extol the virtues of a “free market” economy expect the various stock markets to continue their slide downward over the next year or so, because much of the “froth” was sustained by cheap money, ala QE in various forms by the different(and intimately connected) Central Banks of the G20 countries.

The Piper piped, now it’s time to Pay!

Hope your powder is dry,

MAC

“A happy person is not a person in a certain set of circumstances,

but rather a person with a certain set of attitudes.”

— Hugh Downs

Someone once said, “May you live in interesting times.”

I am inclined to think that the newly minted wealthy(?) in China are doing just that, having just lost their ass in the Shanghai Stock Market.  Is this the trigger that kicks out the last supporting leg of the global economy?  Since the real estate market in China is on a slide those who were looking to conserve their wealth were in the equities market since it is getting harder to move their funds offshore. The rapidly growing “middle class” wanting greater returns turned to stock investing and even leveraged their homes to play the game!  POOF!  All gone as some of the companies they bought shares in are now worth “Zilch, Zip, Nada!”

Now we wait for the “other shoe” to drop.  I doubt the “Grexit” from the EU will cause it directly, but a confluence of conditions will eventually gel to create anxiety in enough investors to start to go to cash which will slow the engine of the economy(people buying stuff) which in turn will slow the exportation of goods that most countries rely on.

Private Equity (PE) funds such as Hedge funds, are gearing up for Buy Out opportunities to reap their profits before TSHTF.  Many funds are investing in infrastructure projects in the Euro Zone, but even this strategy may drag out for many years beyond what their usual target dates are.

Being debt free as much as possible and wise investing will let you sleep more comfortably and if there is one thing I enjoy it is a comfortable bed!

May you always have the wind at your back and a “buck” in your pocket.

Until next time,

MAC

News from one of my sources in the “Hub of the Americas”.

http://www.pardinilaw.com/panamalawblog/

Also, for my philosophical rant……………….

“He who has done his best for his own time has lived for all times.”
— Friedrich von Schiller

Be Well,

“Positive thinking will let you do everything better than negative thinking will.”

— Zig Ziglar