Thursday, October 25, 2007

Imagining a World Without Investment Banks

From the WSJ's DealJournal blog:

At their core, investment banks are middle men, lining up buyers and sellers of stock, bonds and all matter of exotic securities. What if a seller of those bonds could simply cut out the middleman, the way Amazon has done with books, blogs with the news media and Radiohead with record companies?

That’s why it is important to pay attention to the $1.8 billion leveraged buyout of Goodman Global announced Monday by San Francisco buyout shop Hellman & Friedman. Goodman is a stunningly boring company. But the way this deal was financed suggests the possibility of something exciting, and downright threatening to Wall Street....MORE