Home Depot Deal Renovated

The sale of Home Depot's wholesale supply unit—threatened by the credit crisis —is going ahead after tense negotiations between Home Depot, private equity firms buying the company and banks providing the financing. Home Depot slashed its price 18% to $8.5 billion and guaranteed some of the loans to close the deal, the Wall Street Journal reports.     

Wall Street is watching this deal closely because it's the first major buyout impacted by the credit crisis. There are another $400 billion worth of other deals  working their way through the system. Any or all of those may be the focus of some testy renegotiations. (More Home Depot stories.)