It’s good to be a bank

Imagine a deal where the buyer only has to put up 29% of the purchase price and the new company ends up with debt equal close to eight times earnings. Sounds like a throwback to the days when the world was awash in cheap money and Blackstone boss Stephen Schwarzman was booking Rod Stewart for his birthday parties. In fact, those are the terms accompanying Barclays’ sale of its iShares business to British private equity firm CVC, which was announced Thursday. Cincinnati bank Fifth Third did some...