Forbes.com: Silver Lake’s big booty :: Combined with an additional $56.5 million of consulting fees, the buyout group has recouped its entire investment plus a two-year cash return of 26%, and still owns 80% of Seagate worth $4 billion. Silver Lake Partners owns about one-third of that booty. IPOs are supposed to raise cash mainly to pursue a business. Seagate’s IPO has benefited only the buyout investors. The implicit rationale is that they had already done the work that normally would follow an IPO. Certainly Seagate’s value was enhanced by two years of restructuring. But the apparent compulsion of Silver Lake Partners to reap the rewards risk free and at great cost to Seagate doesn’t say much for their vision of the upside. Like most investors these days, Silver Lake has reason to be gun-shy. Figures culled from U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filings of companies involved with its four other major investments–all announced in 2000–indicate a return to date of about $155 million on $615 million invested, or around 25%.