Blackstone's Inauspicious Timing: Hilton Buyout | wsj.com
One year ago, just as the credit doors were swinging closed, Blackstone Group LP succeeded in pulling off one last deal and it was a beaut: The $26 billion leveraged buyout of Hilton Hotels Corp., with its 2,900 hotels and 490,000 rooms throughout the world. Today, investors in the private-equity giant, the banks that provided $20 billion to finance the acquisition and -- in a strange twist of events -- U.S. taxpayers, may be wishing the firm hadn't been quite so skillful at getting the deal done.
