August 3, 2007 (LPAC)--The number of big leveraged buyout deals that have collapsed has more than doubled in the last two weeks from $17 billion in the first two weeks of July to $43 Billion in the last two weeks alone. According to figures from Thomson Financial, $546 billion in deals globally have yet to be closed with $26 billion within the UK.

The Daily Telegraph reports that $87 billion dollars has been wiped off the books of 10 of the world's leading banks since January, including Barclays, $6.1bn; Credit Suisse, $3.6bn; Goldman Sachs, $4.6bn; HBOS, $12.7bn; HSBC, $5.5bn; JPMorgan, $12.1bn; RBS, $16bn; Morgan Stanley, $3.8bn; Bear Stearns, which lost $5.3 billion, a full third of its market value, and Merrill Lynch which alone lost $17bn in market value.

On top of this the Financial Times, under the headline "Buyout groups turn screw on banks," runs an article on how the buyout firms are demanding that the banks come up with the funds they were contracted to raise. The banks themselves, because they can't sell the debt and therefore don't want to back the loans with their own resources, want to pull out of the deals. They are said to be going so far as to consider picking up the breakup fees paid by private equity groups to companies if a deal collapses. Over the last period banks and buyout groups were so eager to do the deals that they stopped putting escape clauses in the contracts, so now lawyers are being brought in by the banks and the equity groups.