Private equity
Equity
The capital put into an enterprise by the shareholders. Not to be confused with ’hard capital’ or ’unsecured debt’.
investment funds (sometimes called ’mutual funds’ seek to invest in companies according to certain criteria; of which they most often are specialized: capital-risk, capital development funds, leveraged buy-out
LBO
leveraged Buy-Out
The purchase or takeover of control of a company financed by debt. Most frequently an LBO is carried out by a holding company which borrows most of the funds needed for the purchase of the target company’s shares, restructures it, then requires dividends which are used to reimburse the loans and finally re-sells the company once it has returned to profitability.
(LBO), which reflect the different levels of the company’s maturity.