Deal value at time of purchase: $17.6 billion in 2006
Inflation adjusted value: $20.8 billion in today's dollars
Buyers: Blackstone Group, Permira, the Carlyle Group & TPG Capital
The deal for Freescale Semiconductor, at the time, represented the biggest LBO in the tech sector. But it didn't go so great. The company filed for IPO in 2011 and posted solid returns on public markets and ultimately agreed to be bought out by NXP Technologies earlier this year. After all this, according to a Forbes report, PE profits were meager.