A consortium of investors that are being led by Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) and Silver Lake are submitting a plan to buy a minority stake in Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO). TPG Capital is another company that will be making a proposal for Yahoo! Both of these proposals would lead to taking a stake of around 20% of the company.

According to several buyout firms Nielsen is planning to have an IPO. Nielsen is a TV and Internet ratings research company. Nielsen has six sponsors: Alpinvest, The Blackstone Group, The Carlyle Group, Hellman & Friedman, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts (KKR), and THL Partners. The six sponsors are hoping that Nielsen will receive a $21 billion enterprise value according to the Financial Times. Nielsen is expected to make about $1.6 billion in EBITDA this year according to an F.T. source. [FT via NYT]

Eastman Kodak Company (NYSE:EK)? plans to raise about $1.1 billion in the near future. About $700 million will come from the company internally as part of a debt refinancing. Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co., the investment firm that trades on the New York Stock Exchange as KKR Financial Holdings LLC (NYSE:KFN)? will also invest $400 million into Kodak.

Kokak will also issue $300 million in new convertible notes due around 2017. The interest rate will range from 10-10.5% per year. KKR will buy warrants to purchase about 53 million shares in Kodak. There are about 268 million Kodak shares outstanding. This means KKR will have about a 16.5% ownership in Kodak. Kodak’s $575 million of convertible bonds due in 2033 rose 2.5% to $0.98 on the dollar. This is the highest level since April 2008.

The $700 million senior secured notes that Kodak plans to raise will go towards retiring their 2033 convertible bonds. George Fisher, former Chairman of Kodak is a senior adviser at KKR. KKR was started in 1976 and is one of the biggest private equity companies in the world. They control about $50 billion in assets. Kodak was founded by Geroge Eastman around 1880.

“We believe KKR’s investment is a validation of our strategy and our team,” stated Kodak Chairman and CEO Antonio M. Perez in a press release. “KKR has a long, successful record of working with, and investing in, companies with significant value-creation potential. We look forward to working with the KKR team to accelerate the growth of our portfolio of high-margin annuity businesses.”

Rafat Ali at PaidContent has reported that Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. had secretly made a bid of $50 billion for Vivendi. If this deal is to take place, it be the “largest leveraged buyout offer* [LBO] in history [source].” And it wouldn’t be the first time that KKR would be responsible for the largest LBO either.

The 1988 LBO by KKR of RJR Nabisco for $31.4 billion with a net debt of $6.3 billion was the largest price ever paid for a commercial enterprise as well. Then KKR was responsible for a follow-up purchase of HCA Inc. for $33 billion. The purchase of RJR Nabisco was the inspiration for #1 New York Times best-selling book and follow-up movie, Barbarians at the Gate: The Fall of RJR Nabisco (book written by Bryan Burrough and John Helyar).

How is this pertinent for the Web 2.0 world? YouTube could be affected by this transaction. Vivendi SA, the French media conglomerate owns Universal Music. On October 9, YouTube and Universal Music formed a strategic alliance to have unauthorized videos removed and Universal Music agreed to provide videos for YouTube to use legally. Now that another party is getting involved and is potentially buying the parent company of Universal Music, the terms and conditions of the YouTube-Universal Music partnership may change.

However, there isn’t enough information available presently about what would actually happen to the YouTube-Universal Music partnership if KKR does buy Vivendi. For all we know, KKR may or may not intervene.

*Leveraged buyout:

A leveraged buyout (or LBO, or highly-leveraged transaction (HLT), or “bootstrap” transaction) occurs when a financial sponsor gains control of a majority of a target company’s equity through the use of borrowed money or debt. A leveraged buyout is essentially a strategy involving the acquisition of another company using a significant amount of borrowed money (bonds or loans) to meet the cost of acquisition. Often, the assets of the company being acquired are used as collateral for the loans in addition to the assets of the acquiring company. The purpose of leveraged buyouts is to allow companies to make large acquisitions without having to commit a lot of capital. In an LBO, there is usually a ratio of 70% debt to 30% equity.”

[Source: Levaraged buyout - Wikipedia]