Latest list of largest private companies revealed . . .
Wednesday, November 4th, 2009Forbes just released its latest compilation of the largest US-based private companies with the help of Capital IQ. This year, Forbes finally acknowledged the fact that private equity firms are responsible for a solid chunk of the list, noting that roughly a third of the 248 entries are backed by investment groups. There’s even an interesting slide-show covering notable firms (Bain, TPG, KKR, etc.) and their largest holdings.
However, I find it interesting that #27, Platinum Equity with $11.35 billion in consolidated current portfolio revenue (I assume this includes international company investments as well), is considered a “conglomerate” within the list versus a private equity group and excluded. I’m not sure where the confusion is, but this seems to be a yearly error. Going with this logic, if we break out all of KKR’s US based and privately held portfolio companies, we come up with $123 billion in revenue. That would make KKR a solid #1.