How the Twinkie Made the Superrich Even Richer
Behind the financial maneuvering at Hostess, an investigation by The New York Times found a blueprint for how private equity executives have amassed some of the greatest fortunes of the modern era.
'As fans gathered on Rockefeller Plaza in Manhattan, Al Roker pulled up in a big red delivery truck, ready to give America what it wanted: Twinkies.
The snack cakes flew through the air into the crowd pressed against metal barriers. One man shoved cream-filled treats into his mouth. Another “Today” host tucked Twinkies into the neckline of her dress.
Across the nation in the summer of 2013, there was a feeding frenzy for Twinkies. The iconic snack cake returned to shelves just months after Hostess had shuttered its bakeries and laid off thousands of workers. The return was billed on “Today” as “the sweetest comeback in the history of ever.”
Nowhere was it sweeter, perhaps, than at the investment firms Apollo Global Management and Metropoulos & Company, which spent $186 million in cash to buy some of Hostess’s snack cake bakeries and brands in early 2013.
Less than four years later, they sold the company in a deal that valued Hostess at $2.3 billion. Apollo and Metropoulos have now reaped a return totaling 13 times their original cash investment.
Behind the financial maneuvering at Hostess, an investigation by The New York Times found a blueprint for how private equity executives like those at Apollo have amassed some of the greatest fortunes of the modern era.
Deals like Hostess have helped make the men running the six largest publicly traded private equity firms collectively the highest-earning executives of any major American industry, according to a joint study that The Times conducted with Equilar, a board and executive data provider. The study covered thousands of publicly traded companies; privately held corporations do not report such data.'>>>
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/10/business/dealbook/how-the-twinkie-made-the-super-rich-even-richer.html?
