The Private Equity Party Might Be Ending. It’s About Time.

In the early 1980s, William Simon, a former secretary of the Treasury, and Ray Chambers, a former investment banker in New Jersey, made a fortune buying Gibson Greetings Inc. using very little of their own money and then selling it. Each man reaped a windfall of $70 million from an initial investment of $330,000. Ever since, the alchemy of leveraged buyouts has been dazzling. READ MORE