MBO: The party’s over

Management-led buyouts can irritate public shareholders who often feel unfairly compensated. Shareholders want their managers to maximise the price they receive for their company. But they suspect that managers want to buy the company as cheaply as possible. Nonetheless, management buyouts proliferated over the past two years. But the turn in the buyout market may be changing all that. Not because corporate chieftains have suddenly become more altruistic. Rather, there are fewer incentives for ...