They didn’t quite have the skill of the LA Lakers.

But a bunch of private equity’s finest put in at least as much energy as the Los Angeles professionals last night in bashing their hedge fund rivals and helped raise some $750,000.

A match to raise money for Youth, I.N.C. a non-profit focused on children, saw the fifteen minute game end 32-24 to the buyout men.

Not that this wasn’t also a matter of pride.

“We won last year too,” noted Clayton Dubilier & Rice’s Rick Schnall, after the match. “This year they had college basketball players and we still won!”

MidOcean Partners’ Ted Virtue, from the private equity team, quipped:  ”We played well - but as you know, the private equity guys are smarter than the hedge fund team.”

On the private equity side: players were Ted Virtue, MidOcean Partners; Rob Berner, CVC Capital Partners; Ron Blaylock, GenNx360;  Rick Schnall, Clayton, Dubilier & Rice; Jacob Capps, Lion Capital; Luke Long, Thomas H. Lee Capital; Rick Schifter, Texas Pacific Group and Michael Beal of Morgan Stanley.

The hedge fund team was led by Marc Lasry, Avenue Capital. Players included Ryan Renteria, Karsch Capital; Andrew Fishman, Schonfeld Group; Funsho Allu, AIG Investments and Steve Cronin of Schonfeld Group.

(Photo from ©2008 ImageLinkPhoto.com/G. Chesman. For more pics click here)

A deal to sell the Chicago Cubs baseball team was originally supposed to be clinched last year. That’s slowly slipped and now some fear it could even take till after the 2008 baseball season before its owner Tribune finds a new owner for the loveable losers.

To be sure, there’s a lot of activity going on behind the scenes, with talks to sell Wrigley Field to Illinois state moving forward. But the complexities involved mean it’ll likely be months before a deal for all the assets — the field, the team and a stake in a sports TV network - is sorted out. 
    
The flip side is that for real estate tycoon Sam Zell, who led the $8.2 billion buyout of Tribune, it doesn’t matter much. Since Tribune is now a privately owned company, it doesn’t have the pressures of quarterly deadlines and vocal shareholders.
    
However, the pressure is at an all-time high for the Cubs team, which is trying to win its first World Series title in 100 years.  
    

The paperwork going back and forth on the Clear Channel case is piling up.

According to a filing from the banks being sued last night, it could increase almost exponentially.

“Discovery from the banks alone will involve the collection and review for production of hundreds of thousands of pages of documents and e-mails,” they say in a filing where they ask the court to dismiss claims against them.

In fact, it seems as though there were few people who didn’t have some kind of involvement with the deal.

“…given the size and nature of the contemplated transaction, individuals from numerous areas within each of the banks were involved, including their merger acquisitions, loan syndications, high yield syndications, asset based finance, private equity, capital markets, and securitization groups. In addition, more than twenty individuals from the sponsors and the company have been directly involved with the negotiations and dozens more have played some role… Even if depositions were limited to the five individuals with the greatest level of involvement from each of the banks, the sponsors and Clear Channel, respectively, there would be 40 depositions.”

To read the bank’s response click here.

The fight centers around the agreements struck between the banks and the buyout firms. A credit agreement dated last week is buried in these documents (split into four parts):

Part one Part two Part three Part four

The Commitment Letter and lawsuits can be found here.

Six Wall Street banks are being sued by Clear Channel and the private equity firms trying to buy it, and this is the guy they’re up against.

“I grew up loved. And I grew up fighting,” proclaims lawyer Joe Jamail, who represents the buyers, on his website. “I have never been able to stand by and let someone abuse another person. I have to go in and help. And win.”

This picture, taken from his website, we’re assuming is more than 20 years old as the Pennzoil case Jamail famously won was in 1985.

Clear Channel scored a first-round victory this morning by getting a temporary restraining order from judge John D. Gabriel preventing the banks reneging on their commitments — in other words, maintaining the status quo. (Read the document here)

That follows the lawsuits filed last night in Texas (full document here) and one in New York (full document).

Meanwhile, tracking down the documents the lawsuits cite isn’t an easy task. The commitment letter is on the SEC web site, but only if you know just where to look. Save yourself some work by clicking here instead.

Where’s Exhibit A? 

JPMorgan’s deal to buy Bear Stearns has a lengthy merger agreement, but tracking down one important document is proving a challenge.

The Option Agreement, or “Exhibit A”, which supposedly details an option JPMorgan has to buy 20 percent of Bear’s shares, is only mentioned in the agreement, not attached.

Even three days days after the deal was announced, the document hasn’t been filed with the SEC or posted on the companies’ websites. If anyone’s found it please slip it this way and we can make public something that, surely shareholders need to know?

If you’re searching for the merger agreement, the easiest way we’ve found to reach it is on the front of Bear Stearn’s website.

We’re wondering how Jimmy Cayne’s feeling about the near collapse and $2 sale of the bank he chairs, not to mention the hit to his personal wealth.

Cayne, who in January stepped down as Bear Stearns’ long-time chief executive, at least took the call this evening when Reuters rang his Park Avenue residence. He wasn’t in a chatty mood though. “I’m not talking to reporters. I’m sorry,” was the reply.

Cayne may be regretting the recent $27.5 million purchase he and his wife made of two appartments at the Plaza on Madison Avenue, which seem a bit of a splash out considering Bear’s stock collapse. Cayne owns or controls about 7 million shares of Bear Stearns, worth about $14 million at $2 a share. A year ago, that stake would have been worth about $1 billion.

Patience is running out on all fronts on Wall Street.

A month ago, Alliance Data Systems dropped its lawsuit to try and force Blackstone to complete its $6.76 billion takeover in favor of working together to fix the deal.

Fast forward a month and Alliance Data is getting nervous about the pace (or lack of pace) of talks.  It hasn’t gone as far as launching another lawsuit, but is complaining that Blackstone’s in breach of its contract and are “attempting to ‘run out the clock’

Some deals, like Clear Channel’s sale of TV assets to Providence, are getting over the lawsuit hurdle and completing. But its a long process to the finish line at present.

Struggling to make sense of Blackstone’s earnings?

COO Tony James spent a good chunk of the conference call going through in meticulous detail how much “economic net income” per Blackstone share would be produced from the company’s five sources of earnings in a normal cycle. The problem is, as he points out, Blackstone hasn’t seen much in the way of normal cycles since it went public last year.

“In this period we’ve seen both the best of times and the worst of times,” he said. “The only exception is there hasn’t been much in the way of normal mid-cycle conditions. So we’ve got the head and the tail of the dog but not the body in between.”

At the end of agood six minutes of breaking down which businesses could earn what, with the caveat thatthe economy is normal, James summed it up that in an ordinary yearBlackstone’s ENI per share could be anything between 60 cents a share and $2.50 a share. (James pointed analysts to pages 11-13 of Blackstone’s press release which he said gives more data than usual).

That’s a pretty wide range by anyone’s standards. Then it gets even less clear.

“ButI must warnyou that these are just indicative levels and will vary with our mix of businesses… the carrying value of our investments and other factors… also market extremes… can drive outcomes outside these ranges,” he said.

“NeverthelessI thought it would be helpful foryou to understand how we earn our money,” he added.

Hmmm…

When the credit turmoil clears is anyone’s guess. 

“It’s like asking what the weather’s going to be a year from now,” said Oak Hill Capital Partners’ Steven Gruber in a panel discussion at a conference called Buyouts East in New York on Wednesday. “This may be one of the bad hurricanes but the world will recover — it’s a question of how long.”

While banks try and clear the backlog of leveraged buyout debt, the question of how deals are getting arranged and funded in the meantime is left to be answered. From a sponsors perspective, that means doing whatever it takes to get a deal financed, leaving the risk for banks of “disintermediation” — or being cut out – a real one.  Already, buyout firms are going directly to other sources of funding for financing. For example, among the lenders for Hellman & Friedman’s $1.8 billion purchase of manufacturer Goodman Global Inc were GSO Capital Partners and Farallon Capital Management.

Lehman’s head of U.S. loan syndicate, William Hughes, however said at the same panel on Wednesday that the “bread and business” Wall Street has enjoyed would remain intact, with underwriters providing a great deal of value.  

The consensus was that it takes a greater degree of work and co-operation between the debt providers and private equity sponsors now to get a deal done.  ”There’s a lot more work going on upfront,” said Randy Schwimmer from Churchill Financial, on the same panel, adding that a lot of thought was going into the economic situation and determining if deals were in an area investors liked.

It’s also a bit of a waiting game for bargains to be found. On a separate panel at the same conference, Carlyle’s Stephen Owens said that sellers and buyers’ expectations haven’t yet come into alignment but he didn’t feel as though Carlyle was behind in its investment pace. “The last thing we are going to do is race to get deals done,” he said.

Blunt-spoken financier Carl Icahn, who has amassed a fortune worth an estimated $14 billion during a combative Wall Street career that spanned nearly 50 years, disclosed last month that he’s joining the Internet age by starting a blog. 

The blog, the 71-year-old Queens-born billionaire said, was aimed at sharing his often-scathing views about the state of corporate governance in this country, which he routinely disparages.  

So far, however, readers wanting a fix of the latest Icahn blast on The Icahn Report, have been disappointed, with the site simply sporting a dour picture of Icahn with the notation, “blog coming soon.” 

At a meeting last night, Icahn explained that he’s not suffering from writers’ block, but said his lawyers are stopping him.  ”Every night, I write for an hour and they tear it up,” said Icahn with a sardonic laugh.  

Icahn, who has a history of hiring lawyers away from top-notch firms so he doesn’t have to pay astronomical New York law firm fees, might want to consider hiring new lawyers?    

(Reporting by Dane Hamilton)