[Craig T]

Originally Posted by KC911

Craig, you and I were in different corporate worlds...mine was with a couple of mega-banks and later big tobacco. Made a movie about my last rodeo....Leveraged Buy Outs suck . There was nary an executive in any of those organizations (buyer or seller) who didn't make a fortune imo.

I started out of grad school in Business Development for a $1BB diagnostic division of SmithKline Beecham, which became Quest Diagnostics (now $11BB). Went on to head M&A for a publicly traded biotech start-up taken public by Solomon Brothers in 1996, acquired by Genzyme Genetics, and eventually LabCorp. Started my own M&A consulting firm in 2004, mostly putting deals together for LabCorp ($12BB-"LH" NASDAQ). We did some buy-side roll-up work for private equity, but wasn't my cup of tea.

Of course the execs of the buying companies make big money already, but rarely was there any kind of immediate windfall from the closing of a deal for them. I made a LOT of the selling business's shareholders and execs rich beyond imagine. I once wired a guy $37MM out the escrow account for a business he started just 5 years earlier after selling it for $45MM. Within two years 80% of the business was lost by the buyer and several top buy-side execs lost their jobs.

I was like a bounty hunter. I dropped the body off at the jail, dead or alive. I got my money and rode of....never to look back. I didn't do integration. A few years ago I lost the stomach for it. I retired last January.