Buyout capital: Philly's 202 corridor

For the second year in a row, suburban Philadelphia's moderate-Republican Sixth Congressional District has listed among the top 10 of the 438 U.S. Congressional districts last year, as ranked by value of private equity investments, reports the Private Equity Growth Council, a lobbying group devoted to advocating investors' interest on issues like protecting low federal capital-gains tax rates for buyout dealmakers' "carried interest" profit sharing.

Freshman Rep. Ryan Costello's gerrymandered swath of suburbia, which sprawls like dragons mating across bits of Chester, Montgomery, Berks and Lebanon counties, ranked 8th in the nation, up from 10th last year, on the strength of Sungard's PE-backed $2 billion spin-off of its own data systems busines, among other deals (revised), council spokesman James Maloney told me.

And that's not even counting Apax Partners' deal for Genex Services, Wayne; Insight Venture Partners' investment in Frontline Technologies Group, Exton; Dunes Point Capital's purchase of a stake in Alco Industries, Norristown; and other deals whose particular valuations remain, for now, unrecorded.