The gentlemen had just been served their croissants and freshly-brewed coffee in the conference room of Frankfurt’s Messe-Turm when they were greeted by an unwelcome sight:
Diese Besucher hatten die Veranstalter der Super-Return-Konferenz nicht erwartet: Vor dem Frankfurter Messezentrum, in dem seit Dienstag das wichtigste Treffen der boomenden internationalen Private-Equity-Branche stattfindet, steht ein Dutzend Demonstranten, die meisten sind aus Großbritannien angereist. Die Mitglieder der Gewerkschaft GMB sehen sich als Opfer einer Heuschreckenplage: "Plague of locusts" steht in großen schwarzen Buchstaben auf ihren Schildern, die sich in der Glasfassade des Messezentrums spiegeln.
All of the top managers of the major US private equity firms – many of them with personal net worths of $1 billion+ – have gathered in Frankfurt for the Super Return conference, where they can boast about their most recent takeovers and plot their next moves – all without any oversight of the capital markets regulators. The New York Times Dealbook is live-blogging the entire conference.
So far, the biggest buzz at Super Return has been provided by the Blackstone Group, who had been planning a takeover of a DAX-listed German company of "up to $50 billion":
‘We were keeping an eye on several such deals in Europe, and also in Germany, but then share prices rose too strongly,’ CEO of Blackstone Stephen Schwarzmann told reporters on the fringes of an investor conference.
Well, yesterday’s massive sell-off in the global stock markets might put the deal back in reach? The locusts are hungry, and Germany looks very attractive at this time.
