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Tuesday, Jun 02, 2009, Page 10
KKR & Co, Henry Kravis and George Roberts’ private equity firm, swung to a loss last year as leveraged buyouts dried up amid the credit crisis.
The New York-based firm had US$1.2 billion in losses compared with pretax economic net income of US$815 million the previous year, KKR said in a presentation to investors late on Sunday. The loss is the firm’s first in at least five years.
KKR, Blackstone Group LP and rival leveraged buyout firms have struggled to finance acquisitions in the past 18 months after the credit crisis shut off the debt financing they rely on to finance their takeovers.
A lack of credit for acquisitions by potential acquirers and scant appetite for initial public offerings are preventing LBO firms from selling their holdings.
KKR’s assets under management shrank by 11 percent to US$47.3 billion at the end of March, KKR said.
The firm is preparing to merge with its publicly traded European fund, KKR Private Equity Investors LP.
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LONDON, England (CNN) — “Incredible” is how John Frisina remembers the moment he logged on to Fantasy Premier League and discovered he was beating nearly two million other competitors.
t’s the stuff dreams are made of for the millions of people managing fantasy football teams in online leagues around the world every year.
But in most players’ experience, for one reason or another, the glory of victory always remains just out of reach.
It’s hardly surprising, given that this year alone 1.9 million fiercely competitive fans played the game billed as “the ultimate Fantasy Football.”
So, then, what separates the players who get to the top from all the rest? Is it instinct, or, maybe knowledge, or is it simply old-fashioned good luck?
Frisina, who is Australian, went on to win the Fantasy Premier League in 2007/2008, beating hundreds of thousands of would-be managers both from England and around the globe in the process.
It was the fourth year he had played the game and he says he was surprised to remain so competitive through the season.
“Really only in the last couple of years I have been in the top 200 or so. I was nowhere near the leaders before that.”
Frisina felt striking a balance between superstars and cheaper players was crucial to his fantasy football success — as was a bit of luck.
“Having a well balanced side with not too many superstars is important. I think you need to pick three or four players who you feel are undervalued and take a chance on them.” Do you have any Fantasy Football tips? Share your ideas in the Sound Off box below.
For Frisina, taking a chance on players like Sunderland’s Kenwyn Jones and Ryan Taylor of Wigan paid off — and he found himself still around the top 100 by mid-season.
There were a couple of other tactics that helped Frisina rise to the top.
“I think it happened after I started watching a few more games on television. I got to see first-hand who was playing, what form they were in and I learned a lot from there. Having a good knowledge of all the players across all of the teams is really important.”
Checking teams for injuries and selections close to the deadline was also important, he said.
Seven weeks out from the end of the 2007/2008 season, Frisina hit the lead and managed to hold on for the rest of the season.
“I came out of nowhere really. There was one week where I just logged on to check my team and I found myself in front. It was incredible.”
From out in front, Frisina said the tactics were slightly different during his once-a-week team assessment.
“I kept having a look at the guys below me and tried to keep a similar sort of team so they couldn’t catch me.”
Creator of the Fantasy Premier League game, Mark Hughes of ISM Games, said he had never done well in the game, but it appeared those that won followed the game very closely.
“You tend to see the same players up there year after year. They would follow the fixtures closely and know all of the players.
Hughes, despite being the brains behind the game, says he doesn’t have any answers to the question of how to play world-beating fantasy football.
“I don’t know if I have any secrets, though, because if I knew them I’d be a lot better at the game,” Hughes said.
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Banks are poised to lose a lot of money in the once-fast growing region, but don’t expect them to bail just yet.
LONDON–With the way Eastern European currencies and bank shares have dropped this week, it seems as if investors are expecting a full-blown financial crisis to hit the region and that Western European banks that had established themselves there are going to cut and run.
Is such a nasty form of economic decoupling set to happen?
For now, the answer looks like “no.” However, it is difficult to gauge the extent of the bad loan risks faced by the biggest banking operations in Central and Eastern Europe, which include UniCredit (other-otc: UNCFF - news - people ), Societe General (other-otc: SCGLY - news - people ) and Erste Bank (other-otc: EBKDY - news - people ).
“We really don’t know what’s going to be the peak cycle loan-loss charge,” said Pedro Fonseca of Keefe, Bruyette & Woods. “A lot of these foreign banks have made a lot of money in this region. They are not going to exit these markets, which hold a lot more promise than at home,” he added. “What you will see is more careful lending.” BNP Paribas has started trimming back operations in Ukraine and refocusing its efforts on collecting loans. (See “BNP Stung By Ukraine.”)
It is probably also unwise for foreign banks to make the call on staying or ditching Eastern Europe, because the economic and lending situation there is so unprecedented–it is incomparable to the environment preceding the Asian financial crisis because Western and Eastern European economies are so intertwined.
Western banks will also be wary of upsetting the central bankers and governmental authorities in Eastern Europe, Fonseca said, since they could make life difficult for those lenders if they ever chose to come back to the region.
Investors in banks like Raiffeisen International (other-otc: RAIFF - news - people ) and Erste Bank nevertheless fear that their profits will be hit by an increase in loan defaults, many of which could come from loans made in foreign currencies like the Swiss franc that have became more expensive to pay off for Eastern European borrowers as their local currencies have been slammed by capital flight from the region.
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