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Foreword The empirical research contained in this book is unique. Daniel Pindur has put together a database of successful LBO transactions in the European market from 1993 to 2004. Next to insightful descriptive statistics of the representative sample, this database comprises purchase and disposal prices, interim cash flows and capital structure information. The novelty and granularity of this information enables the profound and first-time analysis of realized rates of returns on individual transaction level, and, even more important, the analysis of the various components and sources of such returns. The covered successful LBO transactions generated significant returns to the buy-out firms. Failed and unrealized LBO investments, which have to be taken into consideration for a complete picture of LBO success rates as well, are not the topic of the present research. The question is rather what buy-out firms and their investors can learn from successful LBO transactions. Daniel Pindur provides answers to this question: an economic model of buy-out firms decomposes the economic success of realized investments and serves as the framework for identifying factors driving these components. Based thereupon the empirical work unveils the magnitude of these components and their relative contribution to the economic success of the covered transactions and reveals the relative importance of the various factors. Operational improvements seem to be of utmost importance, i. e.