PEI Staff

Remember all those venture-backed companies that promised to turn dreams written on the back of napkins into real businesses (my erstwhile colleagues at Robertson Stephens earned many shiny nickels supporting those arguments)? As you PE professionals correctly predicted, most of them went under or were absorbed into more established entities.  However, the most amazing thing has happened over […]

Following an increasing trend in LBO volume in 2006 (Thanks to PE Week Wire/Buyout Magazine Data), 2007 should remain very active in terms of volume, geography (More Europe, Asia and Latin America?) and financial engineering scope. I am particularly interested in the effect of global trends such as the euro/dollar performance in ’06 that could see […]

In the spirit of the annual tradition of New Year’s resolutions, I’ve complied a few points to reflect upon while you ponder the upcoming year…  HIDING THE DILUTION A savvy entrepreneur or prior investor might engage in a little “Hiding the Dilution” game playing during a financing. Now, if you READ all the legal documents, […]

As corny as my wordplay is, the meaning is real. After a lengthy and difficult period of negotiations, the European Commission and Council reached agreement about the final wording of the REACH (“Registration, Evaluation, and Authorization of Chemicals”) regulation. This draft was accepted by the European Parliament last Wednesday, and the regulation will be effective June 1, 2007.  […]

My partner Wayne and I recently were in Europe and England (that’s the correct way to think about them, too) raising money for Apex VI. We came away with some impressions that may be relevant for the coming year or two. While the growth rate in Europe has been anemic for the past decade, it […]

More than Nasdaq or AIM, Yahoo has become in recent years The Great Venture Exit. Nestled in Sunnyvale only a Prius’s putter away from Google HQ, the elderstatesman of the Internet was only yesterday the contemplated ramp to riches for many college-aged entrepreneurs hoping to cash their internet traffic for a cool $1.65 billion. So […]

In a white hot M&A market, we are often asked about sectors where investors can buy a business at a “reasonable” value. While the overall market continues to be strong, there are pockets of opportunities created in sectors where investor sentiment or underlying market trends don’t appear to be favorable – as has been the case […]

I need to learn by doing. It’s an inefficient approach, but information gleaned from news and blogs doesn’t usually penetrate my thick head. I’m developing a mobile collaboration (or “social networking”) application. Though the piece that actually runs on the “mobile” is by far the simplest component of my system (a small Java/BREW program that […]

Harvard Business School’s Josh Lerner provided some interesting academic insights this week in a WSJ piece titled “Private-Equity Deals Alter the Market.” He wrote that private equity-backed IPOs may do well because, when private, company managers are free from quarterly earnings pressure and can focus on long-term goals. Executives have also been pressured, typically, to aggressively cut […]

Today’s interim report from the Committee on Capital Markets Regulation confirmed several of the premises that NVCA has been asserting for some time.  First, the benefits of SOX 404 are uncertain. Second, the costs of implementing 404 have been dramatically higher than originally estimated. The Committee estimates the cost at 35 times higher. Finally, SOX 404 has […]