That fund was used to finance a string of huge buyouts.

'New Ground' The consortium bid, financial analysts say, is Europe's answer to America's huge leveraged buyouts recently and it is a related phenomenon.

The huge buyouts, the big bankruptcies, the gyrating stock market, the tenuous dollar have everyone uneasy.

The firings followed a series of reports in British newspapers that a huge buyout of the company was in the works.

But investors were soured by RJR Nabisco, which went public three years after its huge leveraged buyout.

And those artists who have stabilized leases can get huge buyouts from owners.

Executives are often hired at huge salaries, then disposed of with huge buyouts.

Such a huge buyout is not realistic, said Senator Dianne Feinstein, the California Democrat who has labored for years to negotiate the deal.

The move to become private is being driven by Wall Street's willingness to finance billions of dollars in debt that are needed to back these huge leveraged buyouts.

In Hollywood, huge buyouts are unrelated to an executive's track record.