Dude, you’re not getting Dell.
That’s the conclusion Blackstone Group reached after weighing a rival takeover bid for the struggling PC maker, The Post has learned.
Blackstone, the buyout firm led by Steve Schwarzman, talked with Citigroup in recent days about helping finance an offer before deciding it would be too difficult to pull off, sources said.
Ultimately, the executives who gathered at Blackstone’s offices, including Citi’s vice chairman of global banking, Chad Leat, decided that it would be tough to come up with some $5 billion in equity to top an offer from rival buyout firm Silver Lake Partners.
Silver Lake is expected to kick in $1 billion in equity, while CEO Michael Dell is putting in stock valued at $3.6 billion. Microsoft is also said to be mulling throwing in $1 billion to $3 billion.
A group of banks would provide around $15 billion in debt financing, valuing the total deal north of $20 billion. Taking Dell private would be the biggest buyout since the financial crisis.
Silver Lake insists on being the lone PE firm to team with Michael Dell, so Blackstone or another firm would have to come up with a way to fill the $3.6 billion equity hole he would leave.
Blackstone might have had an edge. Dell earlier this month announced that its head of mergers and acquisitions, David Johnson, had left to take a senior position at Blackstone. A Blackstone spokesperson declined to comment.
On Wednesday, Schwarzman, speaking to Bloomberg TV from the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, said, “The financial elements of the [Dell] deal are very clever. I think the issue will be how the business actually performs.”
Meanwhile, Silver Lake adviser JPMorgan — the largest leveraged lender — is not among the banks arranging the debt financing, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Silver Lake declined to comment.