PetSmart BC Partners $8.7B LBO (Dec 2014)
eventDarknet & Cyber
A private-equity firm bought PetSmart with borrowed money in a deal that became a textbook for wealth extraction.
Who they are
The December 2014 leveraged buyout of PetSmart by a group led by BC Partners for $8.7 billion.
What they do
It's an example of investors buying a company, loading it with debt, and extracting value.
How it works
The buyers took PetSmart private at $83/share and piled on debt; PetSmart's 2017 purchase of Chewy was funded with $1.35B and $650M in notes underwritten by Citigroup and Barclays, setting up the 2018 arrangement that gave Ryan Cohen his Chewy exit money. A Delaware court record notes these buyout models are built to hit a target return that 'will always leave some portion of the company's going-concern value unrealized.'
Why it matters
The engine uses it as the baseline template for how the extraction-by-debt playbook works.
The engine's record — word for word
Private equity consortium led by BC Partners took PetSmart private for $8.7B in December 2014 ($83/share). Debt-loaded the legacy retailer. The subsequent 2017 Chewy acquisition funded through $1.35B Senior First Lien Notes + $650M Senior Notes underwritten by Citigroup + Barclays + equity from the BC Partners consortium. Set up the 2018 asset-extraction architecture that produced Ryan Cohen's Chewy exit capital. [Report #106] Delaware Court of Chancery record (the appraisal litigation) establishes the LBO mechanism baseline: bids 'generated using leveraged buyout models designed to provide the funds a certain internal rate of return that will always leave some portion of the company's going-concern value unrealized' — the precise extraction template the administration's conduct is tested against.
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