The Gun Biz
A look at Cerberus’ adventures in the gun business:
Cerberus’ gun play is one of the latest moves for the secretive Feinberg, 50, who founded Cerberus in 1992 to buy the debt of struggling companies. The firm’s strategy evolved over the past decade to include private equity takeovers, and its assets have grown to about $23 billion.
August 13th, 2010 at 10:35 am
I’ve always laughed at the anti notion that the NRA is funded by a secret cabal of “gun makers” as if the gun business was some huge collection of greedy fat cats rolling in dough like Mr. S. McDuck.
The gun business is so tiny that Metzenbaum or Kennedy could have written a check for Ruger, Smith, Remington, et al and closed the doors if the antis really hated guns (which of course, they do not).
August 13th, 2010 at 10:45 am
The good news here is that the Cerberus dude seems to actually like guns a lot. The purchases are something like a toy for a very rich man, and rich men who buy toys like to play with them. You don’t buy the toy if you hate it. So at least he’s not some guy who ONLY wanted to control a large segment of an industry (though that is clearly an ancillary benefit to him), but a guy who seems to care about the products the companies he owns produce.
August 13th, 2010 at 5:17 pm
s*i*g**h. For a minute there I thought you were talking about Cerebus the Aardvark…
August 14th, 2010 at 3:43 am
Sounds to me like he overpaid.
If todays market slows down [which it has]his long term wasn’t well thought out.