What can three private equity firms hope to gain in their quest to buy Computer Sciences Corp., the military and computer outsourcing giant?

Massive fees, of course.

Last week, investors in Computer Sciences got a jolt after Blackstone Group, Texas Pacific Group and Warburg Pincus said they were in the early stages of exploring whether to buy the El Segundo company or break it up in small pieces.

The news is bringing much-needed volume and attention to Computer Sciences’ beaten-down stock, which is now trading at $50 a share, a 12 percent increase from the day the news came out.

But the real winners in any such deal would likely be the private equity firms themselves, which typically pocket 1.5 percent to 2.5 percent of the value of a given deal in management fees. Even if the fees are relatively low because of the size of a deal, a 1 percent fee can cost shareholders upwards of $100 million. That’s if they can pull if off.

Deals in which several private equity investors form a partnership, often known as a club deal, often founder because of the difficulty of having so many firms in control of one company.

There’s also Lockheed Martin Corp., which last week said it was looking at Computer Science’s lucrative military business, with its long-term contracts and 30 percent growth over the past year. Any private equity buyer will likely pay a premium in the public market, particularly if strategic buyers such as Lockheed engage in a bidding war.