The PCAA companies, owned by Macquarie Infrastructure Co. LLC, want the bankruptcy court to require bids by April 14, followed by an auction on April 20.

The liquidating Chapter 11 plan says that secured lenders on the term loan, owed $199.5 million, will receive proceeds from the sale of their collateral. Explaining the plan, the draft disclosure statement currently has blanks where the lenders will eventually be told how much they can expect to recover. The term loan matured before the bankruptcy filing.

Unsecured creditors are to receive whatever’s left after creditors with higher priorities are paid.

Bainbridge ZKS-Corinthian Holdings LLC signed a contract before the Chapter 11 filing to buy the assets for $111.5 million, absent a higher offer at auction.

PCAA and affiliates operate under the names AviStar, FastTrack and SkyPark near seven of the 10 largest U.S. airports.

PCAA owns 70 percent of the facilities where it operates. Assets were on the books for $94 million on Sept. 30 when debt totaled $233 million. For nine months ended in September, revenue of $51 million resulted in $4.4 million in earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization. For 2008, revenue was $75 million with EBITDA totaling $8.4 million.

The case is In re PCAA Parent LLC, 10-10250, U.S. Bankruptcy Court, District of Delaware (Wilmington).

Of Elevated Walleyes. From the “This Columnist Owns 4 Million Shares Of Microsoft” school of disclaimers, we must disclose a bias that we were once Epinions fanatics. So, the massive popularity of Yelp gave us a bit of that “we saw Kings Of Leon in ’03″ vibe. But we do enjoy how the army of Yelpers contemplates the many diners and burrito joints that escape the notice of highbrow reviewers more into truffles and molecular gastronomy. For the uninitiated, here’s the sort of Web 2.0 goodness the site offers, in this excerpt of a 2-star review of St. Paul, Minn., walleye-and-beer mainstay Tavern On Grand. “Aside from the bad picnic table cloths, hamburger buns/rolls, and rusty salad from a bag (I think Target has fresher stuff)… The Walleye was perfectly done. They should not bother to have anything else on the menu.” The company got a $25 million preferred stock investment from Elevation Partners, which may invest up to another $75 million to buy shares from employees and other stakeholders who want a little liquidity. Jeremy Stoppelman, Yelp chief executive and co-founder, said the investment “allows us to delay pushing to the public market and be more long term and flexible over the next few years.” While we’re not experts in portfolio-company synergies, there could be cost-savings between Yelp and another Elevation holding, Forbes magazine. Something like “Despite Darden Restaurants Inc.’s improved Ebitda, one analyst expressed concern over its 13.15 P/E ratio, and Debbie from Toledo said, “The breadsticks at 4th Street Olive Garden were RAD but the minestrone was totally cold ”

Especially At Newark. Some people prefer to drive to the airport instead of taking environmentally-friendly mass transit or hitchhiking. Those people tend to pay a lot of money for parking, but that nonetheless wasn’t enough to save Parking Corp. of America Airports. The Macquarie Infrastructure Co.-owned business filed for Chapter 11 with a plan to sell its assets to Bainbridge ZKS – Corinthian Holdings LLC. Also filing for bankruptcy was Harvest Partners Inc.-backed personal care products company Natural Products Group, which plans to quickly restructure. Harvest reaped some $200 million in dividends from the company, which said it was sunk by a model in which individuals who supposedly had signed on to sell the company’s products to others turned out just to want a discount for themselves.

The Punxsutawney Phil Effect. The IPO markets feel a little bit like Groundhog Day (the holiday, not the movie) for buyout sponsors right now. It just seems impossible to predict whether a given portfolio company is going to see its shadow and run back into its burrow or not. Generator company Generac Holdings Inc., backed by CCMP Capital LLC, boosted the size of its IPO, perhaps a good sign, and set a price range. Blackstone Group-owned Graham Packaging Co. also set a price range for its IPO, with current holders planning to sell some of their stake. And snow-plow maker Douglas Dynamics Inc., backed by Aurora Capital Group and Ares Management LP, filed its initial papers for an IPO. Based solely on anecdotal evidence like tromping grumpily through the snow piling up in the sidewalk by the neighborhood police station that hasn’t bothered to shovel here in New York and reading Facebook status updates about 12-inch galoshes not being tall enough to block out the weather in the Midwest, we’re betting this company had a strong fourth quarter, even though it says sales and earnings through the first nine months of 2009 declined.

Snowfall apparently more predictable than health-care reform. But HealthPort Inc., an Abry Partners LLC-backed provider of health-care billing services, pulled its IPO two months after postponing it. And HCA Inc., a company that seems destined for an IPO if ever there was one, said it will pay its private equity backers – Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co., Bain Capital Partners and Merrill Lynch Global Private Equity – and others a $1.75 billion dividend, a move that bumps up its debt level and thus could delay any public offering. Its move follows on dividend recaps from a ton of other health-care companies, including fellow hospital operators Vanguard Health Systems Inc. and Iasis Healthcare, as well as pharmaceutical services company Quintiles Transanational Corp., making us think this entire sector is hunkering down to wait out the health-care storm. We know where they can get a good snow plow afterwards.

She’s All That? Allied Capital is like the girl in the teen movie who everyone ignores because she has glasses and her hair is up. But then she takes off her glasses and lets down her hair, and the football captain takes notice even though his best buddy is like “dude, she’s on the math team.” Prospect Capital again increased its stock-swap offer for Allied, which is planning to merge with Ares Capital Corp. “Should the Allied board continue to ‘stiff arm’ us, we are prepared to pursue all available options, including bringing the matter directly to Allied shareholders,” Prospect warns. Meanwhile, fellow BDC Apollo Investment Corp. is one the sidelines for now, saying it’s hard to find the perfect target since “BDCs can be as different as A and Z.”

Conference Klatch. Finally, if you missed our Private Equity Analyst Outlook 2010 conference this week, we posted some coverage on our blog. Notably, Leon Black defended PE in general and Apollo Management in particular, while other industry executives expressed some optimism about exit markets and the opportunity to do larger deals, but expect fund-raising to remain a struggle. And our favorite quote of the conference came from Kim Davis, managing director of mid-market buyout firm Charlesbank Capital Partners, who said mega firms’ intention to do smaller deals doesn’t worry him much, since its mostly younger partners at big firms who wind up on those deals. “It reminds me of that scene where the big dinosaur gives the little dinosaur something, so they can learn how to kill,” Davis said. “The easiest thing to do is win a transaction. The hardest thing is to sell [that transaction] into profitability.”

Have a great weekend, all you big and little dinosaurs out there.

-With Jennifer Rossa

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* Bainbridge ZKS-Corinthian Holdings to pay $111.5 mln

* Overseen by Macquarie Infrastructure

By Jonathan Stempel

NEW YORK, Jan 28 (Reuters) – Parking Co of America Airports LLC, the largest operator of off-site U.S. airport parking lots, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy after declines in business and leisure travel caused revenue to fall.

The company’s owner, Macquarie Infrastructure Co <MIC.N>, said it plans to sell the parking business to Bainbridge ZKS-Corinthian Holdings LLC for about $111.5 million, pending bankruptcy court approval.

It said the sale would eliminate $201 million of debt and is expected to close in the first half of 2010.

Based in Essington, Pennsylvania, Parking Co of America said it operates 31 off-site airport lots comprising more than 40,000 parking spaces under the AviStar, FastTrack and SkyPark names.

The company said it operates near seven of the 10 busiest U.S. airports. Among the airports it serves are Hartsfield-Jackson in Atlanta, O’Hare in Chicago, airports in Denver and San Francisco and the three major New York-area airports.

Macquarie Infrastructure invests in roads, tollways and other public facilities, and is overseen by Australia’s Macquarie Group Ltd <MQG.AX>. The company did not immediately return a call seeking further comment.

PCAA and 13 affiliates filed for protection from creditors with the U.S. bankruptcy court in Wilmington, Delaware.

It said it had $94 million of assets and $233 million of liabilities as of Sept. 30, and employs about 1,063 people.

In an affidavit, PCAA Chief Executive Charles Huntzinger said the company was hurt by a “sharp” decline in revenue stemming from high fuel prices and the economic recession.

“PCAA has struggled to maintain liquidity in light of its debt levels,” he said.

The company plans to sell its parking business under a court-supervised bidding and auction process.

It plans to obtain $5 million of financing from lenders including Dekabank Deutsche Girozentrale and ING Real Estate Finance (USA) LLC to keep operating while in bankruptcy, court records show.

In a related matter, Macquarie Infrastructure expects a $40 million to $60 million fourth quarter 2009 charge to boost its valuation for deferred tax assets. It said it previously wrote down its equity in the airport parking business to zero. The case is In re PCAA Parent LLC, U.S. Bankruptcy Court, District of Delaware, No. 10-10250. (Reporting by Jonathan Stempel; Additional reporting by Joseph A. Giannone; Editing by Gerald E. McCormick)

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KRON, OHIO (Jan. 26, 10:15 a.m. ET) — After a decline in the fourth quarter of 2008 that coincided with the main part of the global economic slump, the mergers and acquisitions outlook for plastics processors is pretty slim for the first half of 2009.

Several analysts interviewed by Plastics News said that the deepening global recession and credit crunch, combined with uncertainty over the future of the U.S. automotive industry, make this an uncertain time for those interested in deal making.

“Our view is that we’re going to have a lower level of activity because there are fewer buyers and people who are going to sit on the sidelines and not sell their companies because they’re not performing well or they view the market as being down,” said John Hart, director of P&M Corporate Finance LLC’s plastics and packaging group in Southfield, Mich., in a Dec. 24 telephone interview.

“On the flip side, I think what’s going to fuel M&A activity in the near terms will be corporate divestitures [as well as] private equity groups that have a certain cycle that they have to hit in order to make money; and I think you’re going to see a lot of distress deals,” Hart said.

According to P&M’s review of the year in plastics, M&A deals fell about 23 percent in the second half of 2008 vs. 2007 — from 166 to 128 transactions. In all, P&M recorded 295 plastics deals in 2008 compared with 326 in 2007, about a 10 percent drop.

While most industry watchers continue to sound alarm bells about the state of the economy, some, including President Tom Blaige of Blaige & Co. in Chicago, insist that globalization and strategy will get deals done.

“It’s like kids in school: Everybody is doing their homework,” Blaige said. “It’s not like the market’s dead and nobody can sell,” Blaige said in a Jan. 9 telephone interview.

“There’s a market for really good, high-performing companies, because there are fewer of them,” he said.

Blaige urges customers to take the long view of plastics, as a relatively stable boat in stormy economic seas. In a seven-year study prepared for Plastics News, Blaige argues that the global M&A trend for plastics continued to rise in 2008 (447 deals) and that the number of deals has remained above 400 annually since 2005.

“To say that there are going to be 400 deals in 2009 … maybe knock 10-20 percent of the deals out of the picture. If you look at plastics, I think it’s not as bad as other sectors,” he said.

But even an optimistic Blaige recorded a who’s who of failed deals in 2008, including the ongoing saga of Akron, Ohio-based Meyers Industries Inc., and Montreal-based Rio Tinto Alcan’s lack of success in finding a buyer for its Alcan Packaging unit.

Headline bankruptcies affected several large packaging companies in 2008, including Atlantis Plastics Inc. of Atlanta; Hilex Poly Co. LLC of Hartsville, S.C.; Constar International of Philadelphia; and Chesapeake Corp. of Richmond, Va.

“If you look at all of those situations, there were buyers for all of those assets, all of the debt, so those companies weren’t liquidated, they were restructured,” said Will Frame, managing director in Chicago for the paper, plastics and packaging unit of Deloitte & Touche Corporate Finance LLC of Detroit.

Frame said that because of the credit crunch, private equity groups are less likely to be active in M&As during the first half of 2009.

“I suspect we shall see a clear difference between the private equity groups that understand the sector and want to keep investing in the sector than the pure financial players who were more interested in putting money to work than in the long-term dynamics of packaging,” Frame said.

But perhaps nothing worries analysts more than the future of the Big Three automakers — and the near-term prospects for a revival of the U.S. housing market.

“There are 300,000 direct employees in the Big Three, but about 3 million employees who represent the suppliers at the Tier 1, Tier 2 levels,” said Bill Ridenour, owner of Polymer Transaction Advisors Inc. of Newbury, Ohio.

“Irrespective of the government bailout and looking at the forecast at vehicles for 2009 and if you look at the way Bush has structured the loans, one way or the other, there’s going to be a huge shrinkage in the industry and that can only lead to more foreclosures and bankruptcies in the supplier base,” he said.

“In the recession that lasted from 2000-03 — which was far milder — we saw a reduction of M&A in plastic deals of about 40-45 percent. I expect that to happen this time,” Ridenour said. “I expect a lot of those deals to be consolidations … I expect the rest of them to go after the specialty businesses to try and rejigger their customer base into businesses that aren’t as volatile and affected as those tied into the construction and the automotive markets.”

Ridenour said some deals that closed in 2008 and were valued at 3 to 3.5 earnings before interest, taxes depreciation and amortization would have been valued at up to 5 times EBITDA in 2007.

Greg Myers, managing director of buyout funds at Milwaukee-based private equity group Mason Wells, said his firm, which advises in middle-market deals of under $200 million, has seen valuations steadily slide through the second half of 2008.

“If you can get — on a good deal, not a troubled one — 2 to 2.5 times senior debt, that’s pretty good, and maybe 3 to 3.5 overall total leverage, that compares to two years ago [when] you were seeing things done at 6 times total debt,” he said. Myers blamed the credit crunch — which was not alleviated by the late-year release of $700 billion in Troubled Asset Relief Program funds to banks — for stalling much of the midmarket and private equity action.

“On a good deal, we used to call three or four players, and were very confident we’d get it financed. And now, you’ve got to call 20-plus, just to find the ones who are open for business,” he said.

Nick Chini, managing principal at Bainbridge Inc. in San Diego, said deals should pick up in the second half of 2009.

“Those deals that were based on unrealistic multiples, those are not going to come back soon. But those deals that were sidelined due to credit availability, give those a couple of months, and assuming the fundamentals are there, they’ll happen,” he said.

All of the analysts agreed that medical devices and aerospace will be growth sectors for plastics processors in 2009 and deals in those spaces will fetch better prices. Amid all the uncertainty, several industry watchers said their firms either had been consulted or were in the process of arranging deals for Asian and European buyers in North America.

Read the article on Plastics News.com: http://www.plasticsnews.com/headlines2.html?cat=1&id=1232983027

Nick Chini, Managing Principal, Bainbridge   will be speaking at the 5th Annual Buyouts West conference in Los Angeles, CA   November 18-19, 2008.  Mr Chini will be moderating a special roundtable focusing   on: Quality deal flow–is it attainable? Bainbridge is also proud to   be a Gold Sponsor of the conference. For more details, please visit BuyoutsWest.