Back in December, Sabre Holdings (NYSE: TSG) announced a $4.45 billion buyout. The buyers included Silver Lake Partners and Texas Pacific Group (TPG). The price tag was a 30% premium over the past 60 trading days.

As almost ways happens, Sabre got served. There was a class-action suit as well as a derivative action lawsuit.

Did it increase the stock price? No.

But I'm sure it was lucrative for the attorneys.

This week, Sabre settled the litigation. Yes, this is something that seems to always happen. The suits are often nuisances and need to get cleared up before a deal gets done.

Although, one of the suits resulted in a reduction for the termination fee payble for TPG and Silver Lake. The fee will drop from $135 million to $80.

That's certainly a positive.

But, for the most part, I think these suits are really a nice gig for plaintiffs attorneys to rack up the fees. Add 'em to the big list of beneficiaries of the boom in private equity.

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

MOST NOTEWORTHY: Sabre Holdings was the sole notable downgrade today.

• The travel commerce company, Sabre Holdings (NYSE: TSG), was downgraded to Sell from Buy at Soleil Securities after they agreed to be bought by Texas Pacific and Silver Lake Partners, two private equity firms, for ~$5 billion.

OTHER DOWNGRADES:

• Telik Inc. (NASDAQ: TELK) was downgraded to Sell from Buy at Stifel following the disappointing ASSIST data.

• Movado Group (NASDAQ: MOV) was downgraded to Sell from Hold at Matrix USA, citing valuation.

Analyst summaries provided by TheFlyOnTheWall.com (subscription required).