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He wasn’t quite as lucky with the software company that handled billing and inventory for lumber outfits. The sterling silver jewelry  brothers sold it at a loss. But they learned a lot about salesmanship, distribu tion and customer service. Another key lesson: buy existing companies backed with real assets. As they worked side by side on a number of deals, the pair began butting heads. Alec says he became angry and depressed over their split in 1995; after that they sometimes competed for the same acquisitions. They’ve since patched up their differences. But a friendly rivalry persists. “Tommy took what I did and akoya pearl jewelry raised the bar to a whole new level,” says Alec. “Of course, I’m watching–and then I move the bar for him.”

Tom launched Platinum Equity out of his small Sherman Oaks home, writing out business plans on the ottoman in his living room. He cold-called business development offices looking for divisions up for sale. That’s how he found his first prospect–LSI, which generated computer graphics to re-create accidents for courtroom testimony–in 1996. Despite having good software, the company was gushing red ink as it tried to go national: Corporate offices in Chicago were out of touch with legal clients across the country; programs, often redundant, were getting written everywhere there were customers. Gores cobbled together $200,000 of savings and credit card debt and turned LSI upside down, redistributing management across the field offices and consolidating software writing to wholesale pearl jewelry one site in Los Angeles. He focused on existing customers and stopped hunting for new ones. Once it stabilized Gores began selling branches. Within six months LSI was off his books, and he was $5 million or so richer.

Over the next five years, between July 1996 and September 2001, Gores’ wholly owned fund (Platinum Equity LLC) made 32 acquisitions and realized $940 million on investments that totaled $226 million. These included plunges into call centers (Foresight Software), networking gear (Racal Electronics  ( RCALY.PK -  news  -  people )) and voice and data service (Williams

Perhaps nothing typified Gores’ moxie better than his furious attempt to grab Pilot Software (now a unit of SAP) from Dun & Bradstreet ( DNB – news – people ). Over a frantic weekend in May 1997 Gores scrambled to put a fresh gloss on his threadbare offices as he learned that a group of Pilot executives would fly out from Boston for wholesale pearl jewelry a meeting that Monday. “We thought, ‘Who the hell are these guys in suits from L.A.?’” recalls Philip Norment, who worked for Pilot at the time and is now a Platinum partner. “We went out to see if these guys were real.”

Gores knew his cramped eight-person Encino, Calif. headquarters wouldn’t cut it; they shared the building with akoya pearl jewelry a doctor’s office and a gym. He quickly sublet a corner lair in a sparkling Century City office tower, rented furniture and recruited his wife and other employees’ spouses to mind phones, pour coffee and pad the thin personnel roster. According to company lore, they slapped a freshly made “Platinum Equity” sign on the door just as the d&b group entered the lobby. Gores closed the deal that August.

Ten years later Gores has 100-plus transactions behind him. “We have a lot of very capable people, but if you make it bureaucratic, you’re not going to be fast,” he says. “If we lose speed, we become more of a commodity.” Still, Gores casts a wide net looking for acquisitions, employing 15 associates to scour for deals. His database manages contact information on 140,000 corporate executives, investment bankers, financial brokers and anyone else who might provide a lead. In freshwater pearl bracelet a typical year Platinum looks at 1,200 possible deals, researches half and pulls the trigger on perhaps 20. At any moment Gores is running a portfolio of 20 to 30 companies.

Three years ago it bought U.S. steel wholesaler PNA Steel from TUI AG, a German tourism company. Feralloy, one of PNA’s three units, was burning through cash, thanks in part to inefficient management. The various units were also fighting over the same customers. Thirty PNA executives attended a presentation arranged by Merrill Lynch to pearl jewelry introduce the company. This set off Gores’ operational radar: If it took that many people to explain the business, Platinum could probably thin out and refocus operations.

With no prior experience in the industry, Platinum analysts plunged into the world of steel for a month, grilling general managers of every distribution center about how they won and why they lost customers, where the bottlenecks lay, how steel prices moved. Gores’ mergers and acquisitions gang formed a plan to dominate the wholesale pearl earrings construction-beam industry and plotted three additional acquisitions that could help them get there.

Gores modeled the deal to absorb a theoretical 25% crash in steel prices the day after they took over. “Our analysis was based on [the assumption that] if the worst happens, can we survive,” he says. He bought PNA for less than the book value of its assets.

Platinum slashed executive freshwater pearl necklace  ranks and distribution centers, redirected sales efforts, hired industry veteran Maurice (Sandy) Nelson Jr. to unite the three warring divisions and made three key acquisitions. Within nine months PNA was the biggest distributor of steel beams in the U.S. In a highly leveraged deal, Platinum put up $19 million. Two years later it sold the company to Reliance Steel & Aluminum ( RS – news – people ) for $1.1 billion. Platinum’s net proceeds amounted to $512 million.

In July Gores lost his bid for bankrupt auto freshwater pearl earrings parts maker Delphi ( DPHI.PK – news – people ). Platinum had spent three years on the deal, getting government approval to offer $3.6 billion, including $2.5 billion in financing from gm, in a salvage plan. But creditors, complaining they weren’t getting a fair shake, persuaded the bankruptcy judge to open the bidding. The lenders won, agreeing to pearl strand forgive $3.4 billion in Delphi debt, plus offering an additional $750 million in new financing. “It’s a tough subject,” says Gores, who claims that the group of lenders hijacked his plan. “We could’ve created a huge ruckus, but we were gentlemen.”

Gores has his hands full with the San Diego Union-Tribune, which he bought in May for an estimated $30 million, based on current industry multiples. Three days after the deal closed, Platinum laid off 192 people; 112 additional cuts came in August. Gores saw no other way: The newspaper (average daily circulation: 300,000) had less than $10 million in Ebitda last year on revenue of $225 million, down from $100 million on revenue of roughly $360 million in 2005. “The outlook was for an unprofitable 2009,” says a Platinum spokesman.

What makes Gores think he can wholesale coral jewelry revive a near-dead enterprise? He likes the market. San Diego is still relatively affluent and culturally conservative; few denizens read the Los Angeles Times. He also prizes the assets–a 500,000-square-foot headquarters and warehouse in Mission Valley, plus 50,000 square feet of offices in La Jolla, San Marcos and Carlsbad.

Our 25th annual survey of pearl jewelry wholesale America’s largest private companies reflects the same turbulence that is rocking the publicly traded firms that make all the headlines. Seven companies on this year’s list are operating in Chapter 11 bankruptcy, including aluminum maker Aleris (taken private by Texas Pacific Group) and Reader’s Digest (by Ripplewood Holdings).

Private equity firms, which own one-third of the companies on our list, are scrambling to repair such souring investments. The State Street private equity index, which tracks investments made by wholesale pearl necklace 1,600 investment firms, was down 28% in the year ending March 2009. As punishment, private equity funds have seen the average amounts they raise from investors cut in half.

Yet the S&P, up 21% this year, has everyone thinking it’s party time again. Kohlberg Kravis Roberts has its sights set on a stock offering for Dollar General (No. 29). Billionaire David Murdock is planning to spin off Dole Foods (a subsidiary of No. 37, Murdock Holding). The fractured Pritzker family wants to cultured akoya pearl cut in the public on its Hyatt Hotels chain (No. 104).

Not so fast. The number of U.S. public offerings has fallen from 42 in the first nine months of 2008 to 30 through the same time period this year. Only two firms from last year’s list, Select Medical ( SEM – news – people ) and Education Management ( EDMC – news – people ), have gone public this year.

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