The views expressed on this podcast are those of the participants, not of Roiders News.

Welcome to the Views Room. I'm Rob Cox, the editor of Breaking Views, the financial commentary

wing of Reuters News, coming to you this week from Times Square in Manhattan. For the first

time in a year, I sat down face-to-face and without face masks, mind you, with

John Foley, our U.S. editor.

John and I discussed a series of deals announced over the past week in the United States

involving the biggest names in private equity, including Blackstone, KKR, and Carlisle.

We specifically went over three transactions that each carried a slightly different flavor

from the old school leverage buyouts of the past. The deals were in descending order of magnitude,

the 34 billion buyout medline industries, which supplies gowns, gloves, and drugs to health

care providers by Blackstone, Carlisle, and Helmut, and Friedman. The 10 billion take private of QTS Realty, a giant operator of data centers by Blackstone, Carlisle, and Helmand and Friedman, the 10 billion take private of QTS

Realty, a giant operator of data centers by Blackstone as well, and a KKR units merger with a public

company, contango oil and gas, giving an enterprise value of about $6 billion. As you hear from John,

each deal contained an innovative wrinkle and a lot less debt than your grandfather's LBO.

But he says that may not make them home runs for investors in the private equity players' funds.

After that, I hand the mic over to Jeff Goldfar, by our Asia editor, who spoke with Pete Sweeney in Hong Kong about his piece on the increasing monoculture of the Fragrant Harbors economy.

Hong Kong's bankers and corporate finance firms are hiring like crazy,

but other multinationals are looking to exit,

as China increasingly tamps down on freedoms in the former British colonial outpost.

Outside the financial sector, trade, retail, and other services are declining.

Raises the question of whether Hong Kong will end up as Wall Street without the rest of Manhattan. Give a listen. Well, John, it is great to see you

face to face here in Times Square. I don't know how long it's been. It's been like 18 months.

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