A neat illustration as to how untrue this is has been neatly provided by 3i today, as it completed its exit from datacentre business Telecity Group.

In a £96m IPO in October 2007 the company raised £75m, of which £71m went to pay down debt. Same old “private equity is evil” story, yes?

Not quite. The company offered good value and priced the IPO at 220p, only to close its debut at 265p. Even after the tough markets of 2008 and 2009, today’s ABB has priced at 345p to raise £112.8m. Goldman Sachs was bookrunner.

And the full background shows even more divergence from the stereotype. 3i backed the start-up in 1998, originally floated the business in 2000, but then took it private again in partnership with Oak Hill Capital after taking the view that investors’ lack of faith in its prospects precluded a restructuring while it was a public entity.

It is convenient shorthand to blame Travelport’s failure on private equity or Greek CDS, but both are misrepresentive.

Morgan Stanley was sole bookrunner on the offering of 404m shares, which accounted for 10.4% of ITV and approximately 25 days’ trading, last night. The bank bought the shares from BSkyB at 48.5p and then launched at 4.45pm with a range of 48.5p-49.5p. Pricing came at the top, a 3.5% discount to Monday’s close, to raise £200m.

 While the stock sale is not surprising, the fact that it is being conducted on an overnight basis is. At 36m shares, the sale represents a reasonable 15% increase to outstanding and just nine days trading volume. But after a tumltuous year that has seen the company accept a large investment from Otto Family of Germany, sell-off assets, participate TALF, all to contend with its still sizable debt load, it would seemingly make sense to convene with its shareholders.

 Certainly with four bookrunners – Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, and Wells Fargo, distribution should run smoothly. One things for sure, DDR shares are cheap – they trade at about 80% of net asset value, the lowest among shopping-mall REITs. Weingarten Realty is high-rent at about 110% NAV. Hurwitz will have plenty of time to address investors on the REIT’s year-end earnings conference call on February 19.

The bonds, which will convert into London-listed GDRs, are offered with a 5%-5.5% coupon and a premium of 27.5%-32.5%. The reference price will be the pricing on the concurrent placing. The equity appears to be just the banks selling the delta, which is seen at 50%-55%.

As part of the offer the company will also complete a capital increase of 86.2m shares. The controlling shareholder will exercise its pre-emptive right to the majority of the deal. The GDRs underlining the bonds are being lent by the controlling shareholder TMK Steel and the capital increase will be sized to replace these GDRs.

Morgan Stanley, UBS and VTB are joint books.

Analysts at Nomura suggested the leads’ credit spread of 600bp and borrow of 125bp gives a theoretical valuation of 109%-112.1%. Their own 700bp spread and 175bp borrow cost still sees the bonds valued at 106.4% on worst terms.

POT revealed this morning that it increased its holding in the Israeli fertiliser and specialty chemicals group to 12.46% through the purchase of the entire block of 8m shares at NIS49.90 placed on Monday evening and 5.9m of the 7.5m shares sold at 49.57 on Wednesday morning.

In total, it took 90% of the two deals, which came in at a combined NIS771 (US$207m).

However there was one major change to the process, which meant the deal was followed by very strong trading.

In the HeidelbergCement transaction, a marketing period and bookbuild of six days reflected the re-IPO nature of the trade that took the free float from 12.4% to 74.5%.

This was, similarly, a refloat with a placing of shares over 1.6 times the existing free float and representing hundreds of days’ trading. But the placement was seen as being easier, as it was far smaller, with the free float moving from 11.1% to 24.9%.

The deal had been announced in the summer of 2009 and Continental was well known as a former DAX constituent. A marketing period was therefore deemed unnecessary, with one banker suggesting the prior announcement of the plan meant there had effectively been six months of premarketing.

However, rather than complete an accelerated bookbuild, with wall-crossing in advance to give momentum, the lead banks went for certainty with a private placement to massively reduce the risk.

Around a dozen names were approached on Wednesday, with about 75% of the 31m shares placed with them at €35, indicating a total deal size of €1.085bn, comfortably above the €1bn required. The stock had been trading in a €36–€39 band since September 2009.

But there were suggestions that the trading that took place after the deal was announced on Wednesday evening showed the private placement had failed to secure the most value for the stock.

A crucial part of using this structure rather than a discounted rights issue is that the rights can be given away, as they have no value because of tight pricing. Yet trading in the rights, which begins on January 12, will show this is not the case.

The stock closed at €46 on Thursday, a 22.1% jump since the start of the year and 31% above the rights price. It could be that the strong performance was caused by the certainty given by the private placement, rather than indicating missed value.

The book was covered by 5.15pm having been offered at E£25-£26 against a closing price of E£28.03.

Selling was expected but not in this size. The sale will raise approximately US$100m  or 0.17% of Dubai World’s US$60bn debt.