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Carlyle in $3.9bn joint buyout
Carlyle Group and Hellman & Friedman have agreed to buy contract research company Pharmaceutical Product Development for $3.9bn (£2.5bn) in cash, in one of the largest leveraged buyouts of the year. The purchase, announced yesterday, is a rare win for private equity firms at a time when the European debt crisis and worries about the US economy have made deal financing tough to come by, drying up private equity deal flow. Credit Suisse, UBS, JPMorgan Chase & Co and Goldman Sachs are financing the deal.