Blackstone, Carlyle, H&F’s Medline Buyout Is No Old-Style LBO

The biggest leveraged buyout since the global financial crisis is no old-fashioned LBO.

In their plan to buy a majority of Medline Industries Inc. for more than $30 billion, private equity giants Blackstone Group Inc., Carlyle Group Inc. and Hellman & Friedman LLC are injecting new capital while keeping the old management. The acquisition also involves about 50% debt to the total cost, according to people with knowledge of the deal, a fraction of the leverage in “Barbarians at the Gate”-era takeovers.

And unlike the LBO heyday, the investment is a bet on growth of the closely held health-care ...