I spent part of yesterday working on a new Fortune Magazine column (my first one appeared in the new issue), and needed some recent debt/equity ratio data for large leveraged buyouts.
The folks at S&P Leveraged Data & Commentary helped out, telling me that the average equity portion of $1 billion-plus LBOs last year was 39.28%. This is a big drop from the 56.88% in 2009, but that was based on a tiny sample size (given that year’s paucity of large buyouts). In fact, 2009 was the only year between 2000 and 2010 where the average annual equity contribution didn’t fall between 30% and 40%.
Also worth noting that equity percentages are lower for $1 billion+ deals than for private equity deals in general, according to a chart from provider Pitchbook. Last year, for example, the typical private equity deal used 50% equity:
