I am a proud tea drinker—I’ve never had a cup of coffee in my life—and so I have been following with some fascination the financial drama that’s been unfolding at Lipton Teas and Infusions, one of the world’s largest tea producers. For more than half a century, the company was a division of Unilever, the sprawling food conglomerate. But in July 2022, Unilever sold it to private equity firm CVC Capital Partners in a €4.5 billion leveraged buyout. It’s hard to know for sure how CVC structured the financing, but it was probably along the lines of 70 percent debt and 30 percent equity. Lipton’s financials are now fully private (except for some bizarre filings in London with the Registrar of Companies for England and Wales).