When buyout groups Hellman & Friedman and Permira began stalking a takeover of business software giant Zendesk in February, they tried to bring in a third partner for what would be a large deal. They called Blackstone, a firm that manages more than $125bn in private equity assets and that they each knew well from previous transactions.
Blackstone was initially interested in Zendesk but in the end it passed on the investment. However, the firm’s involvement did not end there. When H&F and Permira eventually announced their $10.2bn acquisition of the software company in June, the press release did not name any of the Wall Street banks that would usually provide the bridge loans to complete such a deal.
Instead, H&F and Permira said that amid choppy capital markets they had secured more than $4bn of debt financing. The debt came from a group of would-be competitors led by Blackstone.