Market Sentiment: "It is the largest private equity backed IPO ever in US History"

"It is the largest private equity backed IPO ever in US History", repeated Bloomberg's anchor twice in a row with plenty of excitement and light in her eyes.

"The company is still very levered and has still as much debt on its balance sheet as when it was taken private" continued the second anchor, but keeping the excitement and adrenaline flowing.

Bloomberg report and video clip:

March 10 (Bloomberg) -- HCA Holdings Inc., the hospital chain that went private in 2006, raised $3.79 billion in the biggest U.S. initial public offering by a private equity-backed company. HCA, based in Nashville, Tennessee, sold 126.2 million shares at $30 each, the top of the proposed range, the company said yesterday in a statement.

Here are two interesting facts reported by the WSJ:

• The three largest private equity-backed IPOs on record have happened this year. After HCA, Kinder Morgan raised $3.3 billion last month and Nielsen raised $1.9 billion in January, according to Dealogic.
• HCA joins General Motors as the only two IPOs to have nine bookrunners since Thomson Reuters began tracking the data in 1985.

All this excitement about HCA is probably yet another sign of times and reminder than the biggest IPOs tend to occur at market tops. Same for the biggest mergers or acquisitions. Remember when Hilton sold his hotels to a private equity firm? Or when BlackStone went public?

Here's the result of BlackStone's IPO — it was in April 2007, weeks before the markets topped:

Today, almost 4 years after the IPO, BlackStone is still trading 50% below the IPO price of $35.

Blackstone acquired Hilton on the 3rd of July 2007, minutes ago from the market top:

(NYT) The Blackstone Group announced Tuesday evening that it would buy Hilton Hotels for $26 billion, or $47.50 a share, a 40 percent premium over its closing price on Monday.