Pepper Hamilton and PricewaterhouseCoopers recently released a new study that presents findings from a survey of private equity firms. The study is entitled “Private Equity Insight: Dividend Recapitalizations” and was conducted in association with mergermarket, a research and publishing company.

Some key findings include:

• 97 percent of respondents expect to recapitalize portfolio companies in 2007

• the majority of dividend recaps will involve middle market companies

• most firms are comfortable with post-dividend recap leverage ratios of 3.5 or 4 to 1.

Listen to this short podcast with Pepper partner Cary Levinson and PricewaterhouseCoopers partner Tom Pickette, as they discuss the highlights of this interesting survey.