Busch Entertainment: Will Blackstone help Busch parks or take them for a ride?

Private-equity firms don't have a good track record for improving the properties they buy. They're better known for buying firms, improving efficiencies (sometimes to the company's detriment), milking them for cash, and then flipping them when they can profit. Recently I wrote the sad but familiar tale of Simmons, an iconic mattress company forced into bankruptcy from the debt load left by frequent private-equity flipping.

Will Blackstone Group (BX) do the same to Busch Entertainment? On Wednesday, Anheuser-Busch InBev (BUD) finalized a deal to sell the group to Blackstone for $2.7 billion, and the early signs suggest that this deal might go better than others.