โ Final Thoughts Friday for 2025-10-03
Thoughts on the biggest private equity deals by Silver Lake
The biggest story this week is the (new) biggest private equity deal in history for a familiar nameโฆ Silver Lake.
And nowโฆ a similar playbook is running
The week saw the acquisition of video game giant Electronic Arts (EA). A consortium led by Saudi Arabiaโs Public Investment Fund (PIF) and private equity firm Silver Lake is taking the company private for approximately $55 B.
https://www.techmeme.com/250929/p16#250929p16
Why (new) biggest?
Back in my days at VCE, the VMware, Cisco, and EMC relationship became more one-sided when we became an EMC Federation company in 2015. Later that same year, we were acquired again by Michael Dell andโฆ private equity firm Silver Lake to become Dell Technologies in what was the biggest deal ever at that time.
https://fudge.org/archive/my-fifth-year-at-vce/
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