Private Equity Acquisitions of Bankrupt Firms in the United States and Germany

Diploma Thesis from the year 2005 in the subject Business economics - Banking, Stock Exchanges, Insurance, Accounting, grade: 1,7, LMU Munich, language: English, abstract: In early December, 2004, German newspapers reported the acquisition of bankrupt automotive supplier Peguform GmbH, based in Bötzingen, by U.S. private equity investor Cerberus Capital Management1. The transaction was announced 30 months after Peguform, a company with more than 5,000 employees that recorded EUR 1.4 billion in revenues in 20032, had filed for bankruptcy. As it involved a large firm with substantial importance for Germany's core automotive industry, this transaction shone a spotlight on a sector of the private equity business that has not yet been widely recognized in Germany: investments in bankrupt firms. While traditional private equity buyouts of financially stable firms have become more and more commonplace in Germany in recent years3, little attention has been devoted to the niche of transactions at the corporate cycle's very end. In the United States, in contrast, private equity funds investing in bankrupt firms constitute a well-established part of the financial markets. In this thesis, I aim at providing an overview of the most important aspects concerning private equity acquisitions of bankrupt firms, both in the United States and Germany. This comprises an analysis of the institutional framework for such acquisitions, an investigation of the transaction process and the management of acquired businesses, a closer look at the actual market for these transactions and its development in recent years, and two case studies for practical insight and validation of the findings.