Corporate management teams are getting that déjà vu feeling as GPs buy them back after they or their peers had previously listed them. These boomerang stocks, as they are referred to, made up over 50% of the 15 US mid-market companies choosing to go private again in Q1 2024, having only IPO’d a few years ago. This year looks set to be a whopper, with GPs’ appetite for a second serving of private ownership pushing deal volumes to $132 billion through September. LPs are always interesting in hearing about returns on investment. But in the true spirit of this newsletter, this trend for ‘returns’ certainly puts a different spin on things!