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ftr23532 Donating Member (334 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Nov-23-06 05:35 PM
Original message
Some Blackstone and Clear Channel news
Edited on Thu Nov-23-06 06:13 PM by ftr23532
Here's a http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/20/business/20office.html?_r=1&ref=business&oref=slogin">recent article for DrDebug regarding Blackstone's record leveraged buyout this week of Equity Office Properties Trust, the nation's largest office-building owner and manager. I'm not sure if there's anything particularly interesting in the article other than its summary of just how aggressively Blackstone is continuing to buy into US real estate markets. And it certainly highlights the increasingly importance of Private Equity (like the Carlyle Group) in the world today since these firms are basically taking publicly held companies out off of the stock markets and into the private hands of the world's uber-wealthy. As this October 2006 businessweek article http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/content/oct2006/db20061009_816614.htm?campaign_id=rss_topStories">puts it, "The latest boom in private equity is more proof, should anyone need it, that the rich keep getting richer. " Yep.

And check out this section of that http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/20/business/20office.html?_r=1&ref=business&oref=slogin">NYTimes Blackstone article:

...
The transaction comes amid a private equity frenzy for the next big leveraged buyout. Last week, Clear Channel was acquired for about $26 billion by a team of private equity firms. Other deals, like the $22 billion purchase of the gas pipeline company Kinder Morgan or the sale of Freescale Semiconductor for $17.6 billion, have redefined the size and scope of leveraged buyouts. Harrah’s, the big casino company, is currently in negotiations to be taken over by another group of private equity firms.
...


I had completely missed that Clear Channel buy out. Here's an http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/6155284.stm">article on it:

BBC News
Clear Channel agrees $18.7bn sale
Clear Channel Communications, which owns and operates more than 1,500 radio stations, has agreed to be bought by an investment group for $18.7bn (£9.9bn).

Clear Channel is also the UK's biggest outdoor advertising group - also trading as Adshel and Taxi Media.

It will be bought by private equity firms Bain Capital and Thomas H Lee Partners for $37.60 a share.

Clear Channel has been blamed by some critics for creating a blander and more uniform US radio scene.

Clear Channel owns Premiere Radio Networks - which syndicates shows such as the Dr Laura Schlessinger and Ryan Seacrest radio programmes across the US to more than 5,000 stations.

Its shares rose 5% in early Thursday trading on hopes that the deal would trigger a bidding war for the firm.
...


And guess who founded the Bain Venture Capital firm? Why none other than Mitt Romney, http://www.bizforward.com/bos/issues/2001-07/firstforward/">sold off his majority share in 2001 before his 2002 gubernatorial bid, which is not to say that
http://www.boston.com/news/politics/president/articles/2005/02/13/romney_campaign_coffers_growing?pg=full">Romney doesn't maintain close ties to Bain Capital:
...
A Globe analysis has found that executives from a handful of Massachusetts-based corporations, including Bain Capital, Fidelity Investments, and several smaller venture capital firms, form the base of the Romney operation. Many of the donors have contributed to at least two of the accounts since Romney took office in early 2003.
...
Executives of Bain Capital, including longtime Romney friend Robert White, contributed $97,000 to the Commonwealth PAC and its affiliated committees in four states, according to campaign finance records reviewed by the Globe. Romney founded Bain, a venture capital firm.
...

Well, that's one large network of media outlets that should be giving Romney some good press...
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DrDebug Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Nov-23-06 06:06 PM
Response to Original message
1. Blackstone and Carlyle are very alike
This means that the Private Equity market is on the up. The Blackstone group and the Carlyle are similar and merely differ in their part of the market. Blackstone is for the Wall Street / International bankers / CIA and Carlyle is for the Military Industrial Complex / Army, so they both specialize in their own field, but act like vacuum pumps rapidly swallowing everything.

Robert Gates' Fidelity Investments is similar as well and they own so many corporations, that list is simply endless. And hardly anybody knows about them, because they quietly keep increasing their assets. They currently have $1.2 trillion in assets (sic!)

What probably interests you is that Blackstone was also part of the Russian Bailout:


An Interview with Al Martin, author of "The Conspirators: Secrets of an Iran Contra Insider"
(PART 1)

by Uri Dowbenko

(...)

Because of Blackstone's involvement in many high-level high-profile frauds like the Russian Bailout and the Mexican Bailout, one could assume that the company itself was a CIA "cut-out," an actual propretary of the Agency.

"No, it's not," says Martin. "They're just sympathizers. They're an asset of the agency. They're not a cut-out. They're just one of the legion of financial companies, mostly domiciled in Washington or northern Virginia, which the CIA turns to, on occasion, to launder money, or for some other illegal purpose."

(...)

The so-called Russian Bailout followed a similar scenario. "Follow the money, and it will lead you to the new fraud," instructs Al Martin. "The Blackstone Investment Group, even before the Mexican loan deal, was 'in the bag' as it were. Blackstone immediately set up an office in Mexico City because it knew that where there was fraud, there was money to be made. You see it three years later in 1997 when Blackstone set up an office in Mexico."

Likewise there was massive trading activity in the Far East, where the bottom- feeder investment bankers, would arrive to pick up "distressed assets," defaulted stocks and bonds for pennies on the dollar. "That was early in 1998 before things fell apart," says Al Martin, "because they knew things were going to fall apart."

"The Carlyle Group, which is Frank Carlucci, and the Blackstone Investment Group are virtually one and the same. Two different names, but they are virtually the same organization," he continues. "All they do is ride the crest of the waves of various frauds from country to country. Before the so-called Global Financial Crisis of 1998, Blackstone and Carlyle suddenly opened up an office in Jakarta. They didn't have an office in Jakarta before because they were very friendly with President Sukarto. Sukarto gave them all sort of inside capabilities to short, or sell short, the Indonesian rupiah which nobody really had the ability to do because the currency wasn't particularly liquid. They do on a large scale on a multi-billion dollar scale what Richard Hamil does on a multi-million dollar scale."

(...)

http://www.almartinraw.com/uri1.html


Did you notice that scenario. Your investigation is exactly the same, one fraud follows the next once you start the trail. 9/11 is exactly the same and Alex Constantine is currently investigating the Conair crash it's the same scenario, one fraud follows the next like an endless trail and you'll notice that's all interrelated like a giant octopus where military, intelligence, corporations, mafia, politicians meet and it extends way beyond the United States and is more a global structure where each group knows somebody from the other group and all participate in their mutual scams.

And Blackstone, Carlyle but also Fidelity Investments play a keypart so if one of them starts to ride a wave like Blackstone is doing right now, it means that they are starting to sail on a new fraud wave.

Clear Channel is a very good example of a company which was totally inflated. It started out as a small radiostation and all the vultures jumped aboard and listed it at the stock exchange where the game began. They pumped millions into that company and since it was listed on the stock exchange it was immediately overpriced many times which allowed to swallow radiostations left and right, because if you are overpriced 30 times you can pay 29 times the worth, so it was one big vacuum pump swallowing up the market. And the reason was to have a medium outlet for the neocons and it is now swallowed by an even larger fish to become part of some sort of super structure as well.
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ftr23532 Donating Member (334 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Nov-23-06 06:45 PM
Response to Reply #1
2. ooo...nice connection with the Russian bailout
It's amazing how intertwined these things are. Yeah, based on my observations of the economic news the last several years, it appears that "Private Equity" is today what "Hedge Funds" used to be: That new hot class of nebulous, largely unregulated financial entities that only the very wealthy get to play around in and collectively make the really big money while the rest of us scratch our heads wondering what kind of impact this new trend might have and how can we play along too. And look where we are now with the hedge funds and the related derivatives markets...http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=ahnqABy80Itw&refer=home">it's just a mere $370 trillion and growing at a record rate.

Once this hedge fund/derivatives bonanza runs its course and the resulting hang-over ensues (and boy could that hurt), who is going to be there to pick up the pieces? Just an ever growing group of Private Equity firms that will dutifully scoop up the remains of our shattered economies and whisk them away off of the stock markets and into the hands of our elite global criminal class for pennies on the dollar. Hooray for neo-Feudalism! :dunce:
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