Given all the benefits of having a private equity firm as your partner, why would you even finance a company without one? We put that question to Brett Hickey, the CEO of Star Mountain Capital, who specializes in this sector. “There’s a lot of hype around non-sponsored transactions,” he told us. “It’s definitely buyer beware….

In our continuing special series on the value of private equity sponsors, we turn our attention to what motivates a family-run, privately-held, or even public company to sell to a private equity firm. On the face of it, it would seem challenging to convince businesses owned by families for decades to give up control to…

Last week we kicked off our special series examining the differences between lending to middle market companies and those backed by private equity sponsors [link]. We discussed how these companies often are founded by visionaries with great creativity, but lack the management skills to execute the business plan to its full potential. Let’s turn to…

Our discussion last week of the Fed’s confusing position on interest rates drew a number of favorable comments. “This is precisely right,” one reader wrote us. “They should just go ahead and raise rates. The more they delay, the tougher it’ll get.” But our reference to the economy as a “Goldilocks environment” left at least…