The grand ballroom at the Pierre Hotel in New York is an unlikely place to hear people talk about going "clubbin'," particularly when they're a bunch of Wall Street types wearing expensive suits.

But that was the hot topic of conversation at the 18th annual private-equity conference sponsored by the trade magazine Buyouts in early March -- a gathering that some describe as "the Davos of private equity."

In this context, "clubbin'" referred to a particular kind of leveraged buyout, in which rival firms team up to take large public companies private. The transactions typically involve obscene sums of money and grab big headlines, such as last year's $15-billion leveraged buyout of Hertz rental cars by Clayton Dubilier & Rice, the Carlyle Group, and Merrill Lynch Global Private Equity.

And although "clubbin'" is a relatively new phenomenon, the consensus at the conference was that this party is just getting started.

"It's definitely here to stay," said panelist Alan Holt, Carlyle's co-head of U.S. buyouts.