Since its IPO in March, the shares of private equity firm Fortress
Investment Group LLC (NYSE: FIG) have plunged from $33 to $18
But, the team is trying to reverse things. In fact, this week Fortress filed an IPO for one of its portfolio holdings: Seacastle.

Basically, the company is one of the largest lessors of intermodal equipment (such as chassis, containers, and containerships). It's an important business because it allows for multiple transportation modes like ships, rail, and trucks.

In fact, according to a report from Clarkson Research, the containerized market should grow at about 10% per year (through 2008). Key drivers include: lower trade barriers, the growth of manufacturing in areas like China and India, and strong global economic activity.

Because of the long-term lease arrangements, the cash flows are fairly predictable. Last year, revenues were about $138.4 million and net income was $3.6 million.

The underwriters include Citigroup Inc. (NYSE: C), Bear Stearns Cos.(NYSE: BSC), Deutsche Bank AG (NYSE: DB), and Merrill Lynch & Co. (NYSE: MER). The proposed ticker is "SC."

You can find the prospectus at the SEC website. Also, if you want to check out more IPO filings, click here.

Tom Taulli is the author of various books, including The Complete M&A Handbook and The Edgar Online Guide to Decoding Financial Statements.

The Wall Street Journal sees through the upcoming Classmates.com IPO, and so should you.

Classmates.com will help you find your high school classmates, for a fee. The problem is that finding people on the Internet through an Internet community is social networking: something much larger sites like MySpace and Facebook already offer. And those sites are free.

Classmates Media is selling $125 million worth of stock this week, and this looks more like a cynical effort to capitalize on Wall Street's hunger for social networking than an investment opportunity.

In some ways, it reminds me of the deluge of low-quality alternative energy companies that have come public in recent years. Classmates has story stock written all over it, but Classmates really isn't the story. It just looks the part, and is hoping investors will want a piece.

With the surge in internet and other digital systems, there's been a huge demand for infrastructure technologies. Some of these operators -- like Aruba Networks (NASDAQ: ARUN), Data Domain (NASDAQ: DDUP), and BladeLogic (NASDAQ: BLOG) -- have gone public this year to raise more capital for growth. And the latest infrastructure player to file for an IPO is 3PAR.

The company is a provider of utility storage systems geared for medium and large enterprises. Basically, 3PAR leverages an architecture that melds servers and storage arrays to get better efficiencies for storage. In fact, the technologies combine some of the advantages of mainframe and client/server approaches.

3PAR has about 200 customers, including Credit Suisse (NYSE: CS), Dow Jones & Company (NYSE: DJ), MySpace.com, United States Census Bureau, and Verizon (NYSE: VZ).

Over the last year, 3PAR's revenues have grown from $38.1 million to $66.1 million, though the company is still posting losses.

The lead underwriters on the IPO include Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS) and Credit Suisse.

The prospectus is located at the SEC website. If you want to check out more IPO filings, click here.

Tom Taulli is the author of various books, including the Complete M&A Handbook and the EDGAR-Online Guide to Decoding Financial Statements.

On Tuesday July 17, 2007 Charlie Rose did an interview with Jesse Wang, Chairman of China Jianyin Investment Ltd. about China's foray into equities and the recent investment of $3 billion into Blackstone Group L.P (NYSE: BX). Here are some of the primary issues that were discussed by Mr. Wang.

1. China formed a government sponsored investment entity with $200 billion of it's $1.3 trillion (and growing) capital reserves to allow them to diversify and receive higher long term returns.
2. Although they have invested $3 billion in Blackstone, they have not fully developed their business plan for the new fund. The timing of the investment was driven by the timing of the Blackstone IPO and the opportunity afforded them. They will have no say in how the money is invested or how the company is run. They also have an exclusivity clause preventing them from investing in any competing companies for one year.
3. It is their intention to invest the money strictly in equities, as investors, over a long period of time, which could be decades.
4. They do not see putting this money to work inside of China because they are concerned that this would only add fuel to an already over heated market.
5. They are aware of the potential to create market volatility if they are not cautious in how they place the funds, and will endeavor to prevent this from happening.
6. They are aware of American (and others) apprehension about Chinese competition, economic power and the effects of them acquiring certain types of assets. They will most likely make more passive investments in long term growth opportunities where they see good value and not acquire entire companies, although this was not ruled out.

Wall Street's equity market gets back into gear this week with a solid slate, including 10 IPOs and 7 Secondaries on the docket.

Those deals tentatively scheduled to price include:

IPOs:

Mid-week

• ImaRx Therapeutics (IMRX), a 3M-Share IPO for the vascular medicine company. Maxim Group is the lead manager. Filing range: $6.50-$7.50.

Wednesday

• Dice Holdings (DHX), a 16.7M-share IPO for this web career sites company. Credit Suisse, Morgan Stanley, and JP Morgan Chase are the lead managers. Filing range $11.00-$13.00.
• Encore Bancshares (EBTX), 1.97M-Share IPO for this savings & loan holding company. Keefe, Bruyette & Woods is the lead manager. Filing range: $20.00-$22.00.
• Semgroup Energy Partners LP (SGLP), a 12.5M-share IPO for this oil & gas MLP. Citigroup and Merrill Lynch are the lead managers. Filing range: $19.00-$21.00.

In the history of IPOs, Blackstone (NYSE: BX) is in the top 10. Or, to be more specific, the ranking is #6.

The biggest IPO? It was AT&T Wireless, which had its offering in the bubble year of 2000. The company raised about $10.6 billion.

In fact, the top five IPOs occurred between 1998 and 2002.

According to a piece in the Wall Street Journal [a paid service], it also looks like KKR is prepping for an IPO. If so, I suspect it will be on the top 10 list as well. And, if other private equity firms go public – like Carlyle, TPG, and Apollo Management – we may see a list full of such firms.

Interestingly enough, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (NYSE: GS) raised only about $3.7 billion in 1999.

If you want to see the top 10 list, click here.

Tom Taulli is the author of various books, including the Complete M&A Handbook and the EDGAR-Online Guide to Decoding Financial Statements.

There have been lots of rumors lately about IPOs of hedge funds. The latest comes from a BusinessWeek blog that the Carlyle Group is preparing an IPO of its leveraged finance segment (the focus is primarily on mortgage-backed securities).

Apparently, there is already a management team in place (yea, as a public company, you need some big-time resumes). They include former Bank of America Corp. (NYSE: BAC) vice chairman James H. Hance Jr. and former Cerberus Capital managing director John C. Stomber.

As the name implies, a leveraged fund can be risky. But, with frothy equity markets and investors hungry for alternative investments, I'm sure the Carlyle fund will get traction. The buzz is that it will raise as much as $1 billion.

Although, it looks like Carlyle wants to raise the capital on the Euronext Amsterdam exchange, which does make it more difficult for the average US investor to partipicate.

The filing is expected by the end of June.

Tom Taulli is the author of various books, including the Complete M&A Handbook and the EDGAR-Online Guide to Decoding Financial Statements.