It's not the biggest tech acquisition ever, though, as that title belongs to Dell's $67 billion buyout of data storage business EMC.
EarthLink announced a buyout of wireless data-service provider Omnisky.
Cash now accounts for more than 50 percent of the average European buyout, according to the data provider S.&.P. Capital I. Q
WALL STREET JOURNAL Asahi Sues 2 Private Equity Firms Over $1.3 Billion Deal | Asahi has accused two Asia-Pacific buyout firms of falsifying financial data when they sold New Zealand's Independent Liquor to the Japanese brewer in 2011.
McAfee's face-off with Cisco results from years of consolidation in the cybersecurity market: On top of its Secure Computing buyout, McAfee also bought the data-loss prevention firm Reconnex in July of last year.
Still, a leveraged buyout of Fidelity National, a big processor of financial data, may test market tolerance for increasingly larger private equity deals.
One case cited by Pitchbook is the 2012 buyout and subsequent IPO of unglamorous consumer credit data company TransUnion.
Last year, debt — or leverage — represented 55 percent of European buyout deals, compared to 66 percent in 2007, according to data provider Standard & Poor's LCD. "It has become more difficult to finance buyout deals," said Peter Roosenboom, a private equity professor at Erasmus University in Rotterdam, the Netherlands.
Last year, debt represented 55 percent of European buyout deals, compared with 66 percent in 2007, according to the data provider LCD, a unit of Standard & Poor's.
Data from the European Private Equity and Venture Capital Association indicate that while buyout exit volume (but not numbers) recovered from the crisis, VC exits remain flat since 2008, with many investments still being written off.
