Private Equity Firms

Energy Future Holdings Is Fighting to Give Executives at Least $20 Million in Bonuses

As Brantley Hargrove extensively reported for Unfair Park over the previous two years, Energy Future Holdings, the largest electricity generator in Texas, is a mess. Facing $40 billion in debt, the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in April and is in the process of selling off one of its most ... More >>

Energy Future Holdings, Texas' Biggest Power Generator, May File for Bankruptcy This Month

Dallas-based Energy Future Holdings, the electricity giant taken private in the biggest leveraged buyout in history, has been teetering toward bankruptcy for some time. Over-leveraged, with too much debt and not enough revenue in a weak electricity market, sources close to the negotiations tell Bloo ... More >>

Dallas-based Luminant Seeks to "Suspend Operations" at Martin Lake Power Plant Unit Due to Cheap Electricity Prices

Luminant, Texas' largest electricity generator, has applied to "suspend operations" at its Martin Lake coal-fired plant near Tatum. If the request is approved by grid operators, it will result in the loss of 750 megawatts hours, or enough to power about 750,000 homes. A Luminant spokeswoman says the ... More >>

DOJ Sues Dallas-based Power Generator Luminant for Alleged Clean Air Act Violations

Last summer, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency put Dallas-based power generator Luminant on notice, warning the utility that its northeast Texas Big Brown and Martin Lake plants were in violation of the Clean Air Act. The company's coal-fired plants, EPA contended, had been modified, resultin ... More >>

Report: Energy Future Holdings Might Be Pushed into Bankruptcy by the End of the Year

It's no secret that Dallas-based utility Energy Future Holdings is headed toward a restructuring of its untenable debt. As part of a potential bankruptcy plan disclosed back in April, senior debt holders would forgive tens of billions of dollars owed by the company's power generation arm, Luminant, ... More >>

Return of the Twinkie, Sans Union Labor

Twinkie is risen from the ashes of its liquidated parent, Hostess, and will visit the shelves of grocery stores and gas stations once more on July 15. That means Ho Hos and Ding Dongs will return in what its new owners have dubbed "The Sweetest Comeback in the History of Ever." Private equity firms ... More >>

Houston-based Ignite Restaurant Group Buys Romano's Macaroni Grill

Dallas restaurateur Phil Romano opened the first Macaroni Grill in 1988 and thus began the schooling of waiters around the country on how to write their name upside down. (That was a thing the waiters once did there. Not sure exactly why, but people seemed to like it.) In 1989, just a year after op ... More >>

Like A Vampire, Wall Street Will Drain TXU Until There's Nothing Left

At least for now, Dallas-based electricity and transmission giant Energy Future Holdings, the former TXU, is paying off its debts. Technically, it's completely insolvent, but that hasn't stopped the Wall Street firms who purchased the company in the biggest leveraged buyout in history from extractin ... More >>

Was Luminant Bluffing Texas When It Threatened Power Plant Shutdowns Over EPA Regs?

Does Texas' biggest electricity generator, Dallas-based Luminant, just have one hell of a poker face, or should we not read too much into Friday's announcement that it will idle two units at its Monticello plant for six months? If you'll recall, the company threatened to idle the units last summer, ... More >>

Business Partner Says Co-Founder of Tom Hicks' Private Equity Firm Screwed Him Over

John Muse is the 'M' of HM Capital Partners, the private equity firm he co-founded with former Texas Rangers owner Tom Hicks in 1989. It was for a while one of the most recognized leveraged buyout firms in the country before it all but collapsed when the tech bubble burst in the early 2000s. The fi ... More >>

Barbarians in the Ivory Tower

America's for-profit colleges offer education only a con man (or a congressman) could love.

For-Profit Colleges Only a Con Man Could Love

Barbarians in the Ivory Tower

Sierra Club Sues Energy Future Holdings, Accuses it of Thousands of Clean Air Violations

Sierra Club on Tuesday sued Dallas-based Energy Future Holdings, the state's largest unregulated generator of electricity, accusing the company's Big Brown coal-fired plant near Fairfield of thousands of violations of Clean Air Act standards. The environmental group gave the company an ultimatum l ... More >>

Mitt Romney: American Parasite

Mitt Romney’s years at Bain Capital represent everything you hate about capitalism.

Will the Firewall Protecting Oncor From Its Basketcase Parent Company Keep It From Getting Burned?

Oncor, the transmission company that runs power lines and electricity meters, is just about the only good thing Dallas-based Energy Future Holdings has going for it. Energy Future's generation arm, Luminant, the largest unregulated power generator in Texas, has seen its coal-fired power plants preci ... More >>

So There's a Good Chance Energy Future, Texas' Largest Power Generator, Goes Broke

A major credit-rating agency is expressing grave doubts about the ability of the state's largest nonregulated power generator to pay off its debt. Energy Future Holdings, the Dallas-based parent company of power generator Luminant, transmission company Oncor and retail electricity provider TXU Ener ... More >>

Texas' Biggest Power Supplier Wants to Blame the EPA for Future Blackouts

Warren Buffett Calls His Investment in Dallas-Based Energy Future Holdings a "Big Mistake," At Risk of Being Wiped Out

Warren Buffett, the inimitable Jesus of Investing, got it wrong, he admits. Investing in the highly leveraged buyout of Texas utility TXU by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts and Goldman Sachs was a bad bet, plain and simple, he told his shareholders in a letter Saturday. And if things at the former TXU (now ... More >>

How Many North Texans Are Playing ACL '11?

​Over on the Star-Telegram's music blog this afternoon, music critic Preston Jones posted a nice little Q&A with Hudson Moore, the Fort Worth-based country singer-songwriter who has been tapped to be the very first performer at this year's Austin City Limits Music Festival. It's either an awes ... More >>

Former NY State Comptroller Makes Case For Retiring Three of Luminant's Coal-Fired Plants

Big Brown​Former New York State First Deputy Comptroller-turned-investment banker Tom Sanzillo released a report this morning, via the Sierra Club, demanding that Dallas-based Energy Future Holding (and its Luminant subsidiary) shutter three of its coal-fired power plants: Big Brown (in Fairfield) ... More >>

Bad Day at Blackstone For Tom Hicks

​In the past few hours, stories from the U.K. began surfacing: Tom Hicks isn't leaving Liverpool after all, but has instead asked a Blackstone Group subsidiary to help him refinance his debt. Which suggested to some that Hicks's has no intention of getting Yanks-out after -- hence this weekend's p ... More >>

Fake Local Attorney Looking at Real Federal Prison Time For Securities Fraud

In July 2008, federal authorities arrested a Carrollton man named Joseph Kelly Lara, whom the feds had accused of creating a phony name (Nick DeAngelis Mancuso) and a fake job (securities attorney and investment professional), which he then used to sell securities (including Google stock) he claimed ... More >>

These Are Grim Times for the Hotel Business. But, Shhh, Say Nothing.

Dallas's new convention center hotel, seen here as a conceptual rendering, now strikes us as "iconic" after all. This morning's Wall Street Journal wonders whether Blackstone Group LP is still real happy about its $26-billion leveraged buyout of Hilton Hotels Corp. last year -- because, er, "more ho ... More >>

Is the Man Behind the TXU Deal a Hero or a Villain? Depends.

To his friends, this is Fred Krupp. To his enemies, reports The New Republic, he's Fred Corrupt. In the new issue of The New Republic, there's a lengthy (subscription-only) profile of Fred Krupp -- president of Environmental Defense and the man behind TXU's $45-billion sale to Kohlberg Kravis Robert ... More >>

Not So Swift

When immigration agents visited six Swift meatpacking plants around the country last week, they made 19 arrests. One of those arrests was of Chris Lamb, an Iowa human resources employee who’s being charged with harboring illegal immigrants. Makes you wonder if, seven months after Immigration and C ... More >>

Dallas' Beta Blockers Trying to Stop Dow Jones-Rupert Murdoch Deal

The big-money men at Dallas' Beta Capital Group are trying to scrape together enough spare change to stop Rupert Murdoch's Wall Street Journal takeover. Word was only 10 days ago that Rupert Murdoch had succeeded in his efforts to buy The Wall Street Journal from Dow Jones & Co. -- for five billion, ... More >>

TXU Finds No New Takers

TXU this morning issued a statement that the company's done shopping for takers: "No proposal was received that could reasonably be expected to result in a proposal superior to the definitive merger agreement announced February 26, 2007 with an investor group led by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. and ... More >>

TXU, The Buyout and the Power of "Greenmail"

I am sure you've read your latest issue of Pensions Management by now, but if you've yet to crack the April ish, here's a sneak peak at one column inside. Douglas Cogan, who's the environmental, social and governance research director at Institutional Shareholder Services, writes that on the very sa ... More >>

Still Plenty of Smoke to Be Cleared in TXU Deal

A press release has gone out announcing that the law firm of Steve Susman, the Houston-based attorney representing Mayor Laura Miller's Texas Clean Air Cities Coalition, has "successfully concluded its pro bono representation" of the coalition in its fight against TXU's 11 proposed coal-fired power ... More >>

You Know Who's Not That Impressed with the TXU Deal? Mayor Laura Miller. And She Has a Point.

Buy. Out. Buyout. (That's an Electric Company Reference.)

And Qantas Never Crashed

Texas Pacific Group, the Fort Worth-based private capital firm ($20 billion worth) with arms in San Francisco and London, has made a roughly $8.5 billion takeover move for Aussie Qantas Airways in tandem with the Australian merchant bank Macquaried Bank, Ltd., as reported in the Wall Street Journal. ... More >>

Shopping at Foley's

Really, would you wanna give Mark Foley any money? Seems some of yer fellow North Texans have. S'up, Pete Sessions? Here's one more good reason to never give politicians a single buck: One day they're championing childrens' rights, the next they're givin' 'em the IM reach-around. And then bored blog ... More >>

Hard times

This too shall pass--like a kidney stone

Deep Brazil

New Cafe Brazil owner has plans to expand--but not dramatically

Shut in

iSong.com breaks down the last barrier to being a musician -- leaving the house

LiL' Things, big problems

Why no one is winning the battle of the baby superstores