Market At A Glance

U.S.-based buyout and mezzanine shops have secured $55.87 billion so far this year. The figure is higher than the $48.9 billion obtained by the same time last year, when fundraising crawled. The fundraising total for the latest period includes $6.36 billion from mezzanine funds, which secured only $784.4 million during the comparable period in 2009.

Deal activity has also improved. Buyouts publisher Thomson Reuters tracked 161 control-stake transactions in the third quarter through Sept. 17 this year. Roughly 33 had known financial details that combined for $16 billion. These brought total disclosed deal valuation to about $39.6 billion.

There were 111 LBO deals for the third quarter of 2009 through Sept. 22. The 13 with reported financial terms combined for $2.92 billion. At that time, the year-to-date deal volume stood at $10.8 billion.

The largest LBO during the third quarter of 2010 involved Silver Lake Partners and Warburg Pincus LLC. The shops acquired Interactive Data Corp., a Bedford, Mass.-based provider of financial information, from Pearson PLC’s Financial Times Ltd. subsidiary. The deal has a rank value of $3.03 billion. The next largest was by a management-led investor group that included Colony Capital LLC and General Atlantic LLC. It purchased First Republic Bank for $1.86 billion. Cerberus Capital Management LP’s pick up of DynCorp International LLC for slightly more than $1.4 billion rounded out the third quarter’s top three LBOs.