The Ownership Choice of Leveraged Buyout Company

Leveraged buyouts (LBO) means the acquisition of a company using bonds and loans. There are the prolific volumes of LBO transactions in the international M&A markets, and its influence to the financial market is increasingly huge. However, there are very few LBO transaction in the domestic M&A market and there are also few researches in this field due to the private nature of LBO transactions. Once a company is privatized through a LBO transaction, it is not so long before it is relisted on the stock exchange or it is resold to a third-party investor. In order to repay the borrowed money, an LBO investor may decide to end a company's private status through an exit via an initial public offering (IPO) or a takeover. In this paper, we expand Kaplan’s study on the organizational status of post leveraged buyout (LBO) transaction. We find that there is a significant change starting 1986. Most notably, fewer LBOs remain private, the median holding period of the LBO was cut in half to 3.2 years and of those that exit, IPO exits had significantly shorter holding periods. Regression analysis shows that good market conditions lengthen the holding period of a LBO investment whereas the size of the transaction shortens it.