EDIT: This comment is wrong. > So, they lost a $6.6 billion investment, and made $200 million in management fees? Doesn't sound like a very successful evil pl

EDIT: This comment is wrong. > So, they lost a $6.6 billion investment, and made $200 million in management fees? Doesn't sound like a very successful evil plot to me. They only had to put up 20% of the 6.6B, thus $1.32B. The rest was put up by bond investors I believe. TRU was also paying upwards of $425M per year on the debt it had. Assuming that 20% of that was to the holders of the $1.32B debt, you get $90M of interest payments. Given that the LBO happened in 2004, there have been 13 years of interest payments, which totals now $1.1B roughly. I am unsure if any principle was paid off, there are no details for that. Thus $1.1B in interest + $200M in management fees = $1.3B of their investment, discounting inflation adjustments. Basically KKR, Bain and others are at least close to net zero even though they caused TRU to fail completely. Lastly, bankruptcy just means that it is insolvent, it doesn't mean that the current debtors get nothing. If the debtors in this case had control over TRU they can ensure it goes bankrupt early enough that it can cover the liabilities to its debtors, namely themselves. If the debtors can get even 50 cents on the dollar, they are net winners.