Hotel buyouts are proving a bonanza for mutual funds which snapped up Hilton, Marriott and other hotel stocks after the September 11, 2001, attacks.
Private-equity firm Blackstone Group’s (BX.N) $20 billion bid for Hilton Hotels Corp. (HLT.N) on Tuesday sparked a 27 percent rise in shares of the second-biggest U.S. hotel chain over Thursday and Friday, [...]

To gain footholds in the $40 billion online travel industry, Orbitz and Travelocity built up significant market presences using virtually identical business models. In targeting Internet-savvy consumers, both companies provided discounted prices and packaged travel in an almost identical format. Recently, however, increased competition has begun to force changes.
Direct sellers, such as AMR Corp.’s (AMR) [...]

PARIS - Carrefour, the European answer to Wal-Mart and the world’s second-largest retailer, is in play.
It is a classic story, involving generational tensions, a senior executive summarily dismissed and pressure from powerful investors hunting for profit. But it is also a very French story because the value of the treasure at the tale’s core — [...]

Blackstone Group LP, the leveraged buyout firm that spent about $160 billion on acquisitions during the past two decades, earns higher returns from investing in real estate than from its takeover funds.
Real estate has been New York-based Blackstone’s best- performing investment since the company started buying property 16 years ago, with net returns averaging 29 [...]

The Tribune Company, in discussions about its future, is weighing a proposal from Sam Zell, the Chicago real estate maverick and billionaire who sold his huge office development company this month for $39 billion in the biggest leveraged buyout ever.
A special committee of Tribune board members was close to settling on an internal overhaul when [...]

Aspen Insurance Holdings Limited announced that two of its shareholders, The Blackstone Group and DLJ Merchant Banking Partners, have agreed to sell 5,707,623 ordinary shares of Aspen and 2,219,665 ordinary shares of Aspen, respectively, in an underwritten public offering at a price to the public of $26.70 per share. Following the completion of the [...]

WHEN BLACKSTONE GROUP bought Equity Office Properties Trust earlier this month for $39 billion, it reportedly broke the record for the largest leveraged buyout in U.S. history.
But the purchase of Equity Office, which until recently was the largest office landlord in metro Atlanta, may have been the peak of a recent wave of private equity [...]

Pinnacle Foods Corp., the maker of Duncan Hines baking mixes, Vlasic pickles and Aunt Jemima breakfast foods, has agreed to be bought by private equity firm Blackstone Group (BG.UL) for $1.2 billion, Pinnacle said on Monday.
Blackstone will also assume $900 million of Pinnacle debt, raising the value of the deal to $2.16 billion.
The deal is [...]

Blackstone Group’s real-estate arm is close to a deal to sell office buildings in Seattle and Washington, D.C., to Beacon Capital Partners, a Boston-based real-estate investment firm, for about $6.5 billion, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday, citing a person familiar with the matter.
Earlier this week the private equity firm won a three-month bidding [...]

Greenhill & Co., Inc., a leading independent investment bank, announced today that Martin F. Lewis will join the Firm as a Managing Director based in New York. Mr. Lewis, a veteran financial restructuring specialist, will focus on expanding the restructuring advisory activity at Greenhill.
Mr. Lewis, 52, was most recently at Rhone Group and prior to [...]

Blackstone Group (BG.UL) raised its bid for Equity Office Properties Trust to $23 billion in cash on Tuesday after rival bidder Vornado Realty Trust sweetened its own offer in the latest round of the fight to control the top U.S. office landlord.
But Equity Office stock rose above Blackstone’s bid of $55.50 a share [...]

Vornado Realty Trust said Wednesday it was withdrawing its $23.2 billion cash-and-stock buyout offer for Equity Office Properties Trust, ending a bidding war hours before the real estate company’s shareholders were scheduled to vote on a competing offer from the private equity firm Blackstone Group.
The Paramus, N.J.-based real estate investment trust said the premium it [...]