The morning after the HCA deal was struck and the New York Times says the hospital chain buyout will be the signature private equity deal of the 2000s just as the RJR Nabisco deal became synonymous with the 1980s.

What does that mean? Well, the deal breaks the record but 20 years later $32 billion ain't quite as much as $30.6 was back then. Still we are now witnessing the full blooming of private equity. It's gone from being a bit player that took the truly inefficient or the unmanaged and remade them and become a full-scale tool of financial management. And tens of billions of dollars to take big companies private is no longer out of the question.

We can expect some shareholder questions to be asked because these deals usually involve big paydays for the incumbent management (that's certainly the case with HCA) and if the private equity firms work their management and add big value, there'll be a bigger payday down the road. The paper points out that Heinz practically gave away Weight Watchers and saw the buyers turn it into a $4 billion business. And Ford did much the same with Hertz.

Of course, the PE folks would say they can put more money in and watch profits slow to take long-term benefits such as an IPO that gives them back many times their original investment. That's a strategy that would cripple a public company.

Still, Taron Wade of Breaking Views says that HCA is an exceptional case. The company is not highly leveraged and so its cash flow makes it an attractive target in a way that few others businesses are. The cash flow is good and steady and its profits are also rising, which is unusual in PE buyouts but will make the apparently large debt less troublesome. So, says Wade, it's not a boom.

Wall Street is not so sure. The banks love these deals and with interest rates comparatively low, a good cash flow and plenty of targets, the privatization boom may only just be beginning.