YEP!!! Aivars Lode
Dealmaking has been going like gangbusters for private equity
firms throughout 2014 and 2015. However, many experts believe that PE
firms will have a hard time producing outsized returns from the deals
they completed in today’s market, where valuations are very high and
leverage is abundant. To help portfolio companies achieve growth in all
situations, but especially in today’s environment, Advent International
and Welsh, Carson, Anderson & Stowe have both developed extensive
operating partner programs over many years.
What follows is an excerpt of a conversation with Conor Boden,
head of portfolio board development at Advent International, and Tony
Ecock, a general partner at Welsh, Carson, who is responsible for
helping portfolio companies identify and implement initiatives focused
on growth and operational improvement. They share insights into how
operations professionals can add value and why they are important to
investment strategies.
You can read the interview here.
- Privcap, August 2015
Friday, August 28, 2015
Stock-Market Tumult Exposes Flaws in Modern Markets
It's tough to get consistent returns without taking on unknown risk. Aivars Lode
Exchange-traded
funds became hard to price as stocks tied to them cratered
Monday’s mayhem
exposed significant flaws in the new architecture of Wall Street, where stock-linked
funds—as much as shares themselves—now trade en masse on U.S. markets.
Many traders
reported difficulty buying and selling exchange-traded funds, a popular
investment in which baskets of stocks and other assets are packaged to
facilitate easy trading. Dozens of ETFs traded at sharp discounts to their net
asset value—or their components’ worth—leading to outsize losses for investors
who entered sell orders at the depth of the panic.
Products built
to provide insurance for investors came up short. As a result of trading halts
in futures tied to the S&P 500 index, it was difficult for investors to get
consistent prices on contracts linked to them that offer insurance against
S&P 500 declines.
Continue reading article here
-Wall Street Journal
Continue reading article here
-Wall Street Journal
Saturday, August 1, 2015
State treasurers to call on SEC to push for more PE transparency
A coalition of state treasurers and elected officials will soon submit a letter to the SEC calling on the regulator to push for greater transparency and fee disclosures from private equity managers.
The letter will
address public pensions’ ability to track asset valuations, the reporting of
profits, waterfall distributions, and other issues, said Wyoming
Treasurer Mark Gordon. The letter is expected to be made
public on Tuesday night or on Wednesday, July 22.
Besides Gordon,
signatories include: California State Treasurer John Chiang, Rhode
Island General Treasurer Seth Magaziner, Nebraska Treasurer Don
Stenberg, District of Columbia Treasurer Jeffrey Barnette,
New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli, Virginia
Treasurer Manju Ganeriwala, Vermont Treasurer Beth Pearce,
New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer, Oregon
Treasurer Ted Wheeler, Missouri Treasurer Clint
Zweifel, and South Carolina Treasurer Curtis Loftis.
South Carolina’s
Loftis said in a statement emailed to Buyouts: “Working
people have the right to know what their pension funds are paying Wall Street
for investment services. Too often public pension funds pay outrageous fees and
expenses that rob the funds of the ability to pay retirement benefits.
Standardization of fees and an increase in pension fund transparency is long
overdue.”
Other signatories
were unavailable for comment. The SEC was not available for comment at press
time.
The SEC has
zeroed in on private equity managers’ use of fees and expenses over the last
year and a half, and recently fined Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co more
than $30 million for misallocating co-investors’ broken deal expenses to its
flagship fund.
The letter comes
as the California Public Employees’ Retirement System and the California
State Teachers’ Retirement System recently came
under fire for failing to track the
amount of carried interest accrued by their private equity fund managers.
However, Wyoming’s
Gordon noted that CalPERS and CalSTRS did not prompt the letter. The letter was
“independently generated” and was the result of a coalition of Treasurers
discussing transparency issues for more than a year, he said.
By peHUB
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