Private equity (PE) has dramatically altered the management buy-out (MBO) market. The days of the traditional debt-backed MBO are long gone. If MBOs happen these days, they are almost exclusively backed by PE. So, if you are part of a management team contemplating a PE-backed MBO, what should you know and what should you be worried about?

Everyone wants to know: “what is market?” This can be in the context of M&A terms, equity terms (or indeed, just about anything else), if only to establish a baseline against which to gauge your own performance. What a management team needs, though, is a view of “market” that is based on more than what a lawyer can remember from their last few deals or a general hunch. READ MORE