【英语科技】私人股本是“合谋”还是合作？

“The secret of great wealth with no obvious cause is a forgotten crime,”（未查到原文，请斟酌） wrote Honoré de Balzac（查自傅雷图书数据库http://www.fulei.org/traducteurs.ip?locale=zh_CN&trad_id=1088）. The senior partners of leading private equity firms such as Blackstone, Carlyle and Kohlberg, Kravis, Roberts certainly possess great wealth. They fly in their own aircraft and some are billionaires. So are they criminals?The US Department of Justice has launched an inquiry into whether private equity firms collude with each other to hold down the prices they pay for companies they acquire. Do not expect Henry Kravis of KKR or Steve Schwarzman of Blackstone to be led away in handcuffs any time soon. They are too alert to the perils of breaching anti-trust law and employ too many lawyers to engage in overt conspiracies. Whether there is tacit collusion, or a culture of trying to avoid bidding wars, is another matter. Mr Kravis led the most notorious of leveraged buy-outs – the $25bn acquisition of RJR Nabisco in 1988（收购金额与中文网此前报道的数额有出入，请斟酌。）. KKR was forced to pay double RJR’s original valuation in a fiercely contested auction, made a poor return on investment and its partners became known as the Barbarians at the Gate（查自中文网）.

KKR stumped up the entire $3.1bn（疑该数据有误，请斟酌） in equity that RJR cost, but that level of risk-taking is unthinkable now. The biggest leveraged buy-outs, such as the current $15.5bn bid for Harrah’s Entertainment by Apollo Management and Texas Pacific Group, are all “club deals”. Big private equity firms get together in consortia to make bids and no modern-day auction has been as bitterly fought as the RJR one.(译稿：KKR付清了RJR全部 310亿美元的证券价值，)

Since there is money to be made, there are a lot of private equity firms out there. Investment banks such as Morgan Stanley are returning to a business that they withdrew from because of rampant conflicts of interest. But the highest returns are made by the charmed circle of private equity funds with the financial firepower, influence and contacts to take part in consortium bids of $10bn or more.

Those funds believe there is an “obvious cause” – or several – for their great wealth. The big companies they buy are of better quality, on average, than the mid-market ones that smaller funds acquire. They can attract better executives to run them. Banks will lend them money on finer terms because of the fees that big transactions bring. The funds bring more expertise to the task.

The elite buy-out funds view themselves as akin to Silicon Valley venture capital funds such as Benchmark Capital and Sequoia Capital. They invest with each other both to diversify risk and to benefit from a keiretsu（查自广州经贸网http://www.gzii.gov.cn/script/dweb/testnew/listinfo.asp?classid=170&siteid=32356） effect. Each fund puts a director on the board of the acquired company and pushes business its way from other companies it owns. Such charmed circles may irritate outsiders but are perfectly legal.

No matter how expert and influential a private equity fund is, however, the price it pays to acquire stakes in companies matters a great deal. So it helps when an auction for a company draws out only one or two bids, or there is no auction. By forming consortia and locking up finance from the biggest Wall Street banks, private equity funds reduce their chances of being forced to bid fiercely against each other.

A lot depends on the behaviour of the company that is selling itself, or one of its divisions. Its directors can do a number of things to keep things lively. It can insist that debt financing is available to all bidders and impose strict confidentiality requirements preventing (at least in theory) collusion over bids. It can arrange consortia of bidders itself once it has received expressions of interest.

Things often get murkier when the management of a company itself gets involved in a bid. That provides more of an opportunity for buy-out funds backing the executives to avoid an auction. The company’s directors may be too slow to avoid a chief executive gaining an unfair advantage for his or her bidding consortium, or other funds may decide the company is not worth acquiring without its managers.

Still, management buy-outs are not the only cases in which bids are uncontested. The recent $33bn acquisition of HCA, a hospital operator, by a consortium involving KKR, Bain Capital and Merrill Lynch, did not draw in rival bids. The likelihood of a widely contested auction is greater for acquisitions under $10bn than for the biggest buy-outs that are the territory of the private equity elite.

That is part of the appeal of these firms to investors, of course. If only a few firms participate in such consortium deals, often without facing an auction, the returns should be higher. Such firms need not be doing anything wrong for them to achieve this result. Their sheer size may be enough in itself to propel them into a niche at the top of the market where competition is less fierce.

Large buy-out firms have all kinds of reasons to want to avoid hotly contested auctions for big companies. Not only would these reduce returns, but they would expose them to the kind of asset-stripping publicity that damaged KKR during and after the RJR Nabisco battle. They have spent a long time shrugging off their image as Barbarians at the Gate and they like being regarded as civilised.

Is there any overt collusion among private equity firms to avoid fiercely contested auctions? Probably not. Is there a culture of collaboration and a preference to avoid bruising takeover battles? Yes. My bet is that they will convince the DoJ that there are enough obvious causes for their great wealth without crimes having been committed. But it would help if they were a little more barbaric.

巴尔扎克(Honoré de Balzac)曾经写道：“每一笔来路不明的巨额财富背后，都隐藏着一个不可告人的罪恶。”在黑石(Blackstone)、凯雷(Carlyle)和Kohlberg Kravis Roberts(KKR)等一流私人股本公司，它们的高级合伙人无疑都拥有巨额财富。他们乘的是私人飞机，有些还是亿万富翁。那么，他们是罪犯吗？美国司法部(Department of Justice)已开始一项调查，以弄清私人股本公司是否相互串通，以压低被收购企业的价格。不要指望KKR的亨利•克拉维斯(Henry Kravis)或黑石的史蒂夫•施瓦茨曼(Steve Schwarzman)很快就会被铐走。他们对触及反垄断法律的危险极为警觉，而且聘请了许多律师，因此不会公开勾结。是否存在心照不宣的共谋行为，或是设法避开价格战的文化，则是另外一个问题。克拉维斯曾牵头进行了一次最为声名狼藉的杠杆收购，那就是在1988年以250亿美元收购RJR纳比斯科(RJR Nabisco)。由于竞争激烈，KKR被迫向RJR支付了原始估价两倍的价格，结果回报率少得可怜，其合伙人也因此被称为“门口的野蛮人”(Barbarians at the Gate)。

KKR自掏腰包31亿美元，相当于RJR的股票净值，但其承担的风险水平在当今是无法想象的。如今规模最大的杠杆收购都是“联合交易”，比如当前阿波罗管理公司(Apollo Management)和德州太平洋集团(Texas Pacific Group)共同出价155亿美元收购哈拉娱乐公司(Harrah’s Entertainment)。大型私人股本机构往往组成银团共同出价，当今的交易竞争没有任何一笔像RJR那样惨烈。

既然有钱可挣，就会有许多私人股本公司参与。摩根士丹利(Morgan Stanley)等投资银行曾因利益冲突激烈而抽身相关竞购，但现在正纷纷重新加入。但获得最高回报的则是私人股本基金组成的小圈子，它们拥有雄厚的资金、影响力和各方面的关系，可以参与金额在100亿美元以上的银团竞标。

那些基金相信，自己拥有巨额财富有“明显的理由”，甚至还不止一个。它们收购的大型企业，总体质量优于较小规模基金收购的中小型企业。它们可以吸引更好的高级管理人员来经营企业。考虑到大规模交易带来的费用，银行会以更优惠的条件向它们提供贷款。它们还能带来更多的专业知识。

精英级收购基金认为，自己就像是Benchmark Capital或红杉资本(Sequoia Capital)等硅谷风险投资基金。他们联合投资，既可以分散风险，又可以从联盟效应中受益。每家基金公司在被收购企业的董事会中安排一名董事，并按照名下其它企业的模式推动业务发展。这种小圈子也许让外部人恼怒不已，但却完全是合法的。

然而，无论一家私人股本基金多么专业，多么有影响力，它为收购企业股份所支付的价格却非常关键。因此，如果一家企业的公开拍卖只吸引了一两份投标，或者根本就没有进行公开拍卖，那对收购一方是有利的。通过组建银团，锁定来自大型华尔街投行的资金，私人股本基金降低了彼此之间被迫激烈竞价的可能性。

对于决定整体出售或出售其下部分业务的企业来说，它的行为可以决定很多事情。为了保持竞标的活跃，该企业的董事们可以做许多事。他们可以坚持要求所有竞标者都可采用债务融资，设定严格的保密条款，以防止（至少在理论上）在竞标过程中出现共谋行为。在收到意向书后，他们还可以自己安排竞标银团。

当企业管理层自身也卷入竞标时，情况往往会变得更不清楚。这更多地是为收购基金提供了机会，使它们可以支持企业管理人士，以避免公开拍卖。企业的董事们可能行动过于迟缓，无法避免首席执行官为其自身参与的竞标银团获得不公平优势；或者其它基金也许会认为，没有了经理人，这家企业就不值得收购。

不过，并非只有管理层收购(management buy-out)才会遇到出价没有对手的情况。KKR、贝恩资本(Bain Capital)和美林(Merrill Lynch)最近组成银团，出价330亿美元收购医院运营商HCA，它们就没有遇到其它竞争性出价。相对那些属于精英私人股本公司势力范围的大型收购，低于100亿美元的交易更有可能在拍卖中遇到激烈竞价。

当然，这正是精英私人股本公司吸引投资者的部分原因。如果只有少数几家公司参与，而且通常不需公开拍卖，那么回报应该会更高些。这些公司无需做任何错事，就可达到这一目的。巨大的规模本身或许就足以将他们推到竞争没那么激烈的高端市场。

大型收购公司有各种各样的理由，使它们希望在收购大型企业时避开竞争激烈的公开拍卖。激烈的竞争不仅会降低回报，而且会使这些公司遭遇公开披露资产剥离信息的风险。这种风险在RJR纳比斯科收购战期间和之后都损害了KKR的利益。它们已经花了很长时间来摆脱“门口的野蛮人”的形象，它们喜欢被视作文明企业。

私人股本公司之间是否存在明显的共谋行为，以回避竞争激烈的公开拍卖？或许没有。是否存在一种合作文化和对回避激烈收购战的偏爱？是的。我相信，它们会说服美国司法部，让其相信，它们的巨额财富有足够多明显的理由，而且没有犯下罪行。但如果它们更野蛮一些，也许事情就更好办了。

译者/ 陈家易