Silver Lake rides technology debt wave - MarketWatch

"Private-equity firms have traditionally avoided technology because the industry didn't generate steady enough earnings to pay off the big debt loads that often accompany leveraged buyouts.
But Silver Lake was formed in 1999 on the premise that many tech firms had in fact matured into large corporations, with secure customer bases, capable of taking on much more debt.
The idea has helped Silver Lake's first $2.3 billion fund return more than 30% a year since 1999, during one of the toughest times in the history of the technology industry.`
'Silver Lake has been unquestionably the most successful of the current wave of tech buyout groups,' Josh Lerner, professor of investment banking at Harvard Business School, said. 'They have shown that despite the apparent risks of these deals, considerable money can me made.'
The success of Silver Lake-led deals, like the LBO of disk drive maker Seagate Technology Inc. (STX : seagate technology.."