David Toll
Private-equity firms have generally been conservative when it comes to valuing their portfolio investments—with the exception, no big surprise, of when they’re in the market raising money, according to a new academic paper.
The fundraising gods haven’t been kind to funds of funds in recent years. But that hasn’t stopped Pathway Capital Management from making big strides on a pair of recent pools.
Mercer Investment Management Inc. is more than halfway to its $150 million offering amount on its latest private equity fund, according to a Form D filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, sister magazine Buyouts is reporting.
Riding high on their access to top venture funds, endowments left other categories of limited partners in the dust, performance-wise, in the 1990s. But by the following decade they had largely lost their Midas touch.
An official in the enforcement division of the Securities and Exchange Commission said last month that the agency has its eye on several industry practices that could disadvantage investors, such as the charging of deal fees and the cherry-picking of deals.
The Oregon Investment Council may have started a small revolution on partnership terms and conditions.
Earlier this year I wrote about a rift forming among small and large investors, given the more favorable fees large investors can command in limited partnership negotiations. Now a presentation by one of the deepest-pocketed limited partners shows just how much leverage large investors are wielding.
Attorneys and fund marketers predict that buyout shops, particularly those that market to wealthy investors, will take advantage of a proposed rule allowing them to advertise and talk to the press when soliciting investors for their private funds. But some also warn of downsides, such as the risk of raising your profile with federal and state regulators who will be watching carefully for any missteps.
The buyout market is doing its part to ease the nation’s unemployment rate—at least judging from its own staffing plans. According to a survey of North American private equity firms conducted this spring and summer, more than half of buyout and growth equity firms (61 percent) had planned to hire investment professionals into analyst, associate and other non-partner positions by year’s end.
In the latest "Inside the Deal" column in Buyouts Magazine, Béla Szigethy and Stewart Kohl, co-CEOs of lower-mid-market buyout shop The Riverside Company, give some advice on exit strategy based on their 24 years of experience.