Last week, the Conference Board of Canada released a major new study on the private equity experience of Canadian business. During the research phase for this report, one of the chief surprises for Conference Board research director Michael Grant and his colleagues was just how few recipients of PE investments were actually aware of this form of risk financing prior to their experience.
Investors trying to decide which funds to back are putting more emphasis on realized returns, and deploying new tools to understand just how much sponsors beat or fall short of public equity benchmarks, according to interviews with advisers, sponsors, academics and vendors.
Guest columnist Coco Kee weighs in on the 3rd Plenum of the 18th CPC meeting on November 12, 2013.
Wondering what’s hot with institutional investors? Keep an eye on what products advisers are creating for them. And right now at least two are in the market with energy funds of funds.
Decimalization has clearly damaged the market for small-cap IPOs. The VC industry would be "much healthier if we went back to the days when stocks traded in 1/8 or even 1/4 dollar increments for small companies," writes guest blogger Mark Siegel of Menlo Ventures.
Canada's Venture Capital and Private Equity Association (CVCA) and Industry Canada last week released a new study showing that, relative to non VC-backed firms, VC-backed firms grow faster in terms of their assets, number of employees, revenue, sales, wages and R&D expenditures. The good news is that it confirms the highly positive results of previous survey-based studies.
The acquisition today of ecoATM by Outerwall helps demonstrate that corporate venture capital funding is alive and well, says guest columnist Randy Hawks of Claremont Creek Ventures.
These may be halcyon days to sell, but the private equity industry may need to buff its reputation if it wants to replenish its inventory, writes Robert Cyran of Breakingviews.
Guest columnist Philippe T. Schenk of Grove Street wonders if the uncertainty around taxes in Q4 affected PE investment decisions and led to a misalignment of interests between the taxable GP and the tax-exempt LP.
Billionaire investor Carl Icahn told Dell Inc shareholders that an investment bank would help fund his offer for the PC maker as he sought to assuage concerns over his means to fund the bid.