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David Toll

The economy may be soft, but private equity is still doing plenty of hiring, according to Solveigh Marcks, managing director of New York-based executive recruitment firm The Denali Group.
The 2006 and 2007 vintage years have been unkind to buyout funds–and in particular to the mega-funds of $5 billion or more. Yet sources close to the firms managing some of the poorest performing of these giant pools say they’ve made lemonade out of the lemons they were handed.
Institutional investors often say they have trouble gaining access to top-quartile private equity firms. It suggests there exists a pantheon of repeat performers while the rest are condemned, fund after fund, to the lower ranks. But analysis of this year’s Buyouts fund returns database pokes holes in that notion. Altogether the database includes 171 top-quartile […]
The year 2007 should in theory have been a great time for investors in distressed debt and turnaround situations to raise money. But those in the trenches say it was easy to get the timing wrong. Start investing too early, before the downturn bottomed out, and firms got stabbed by falling knives; start investing too late and firms saw troubled companies use the resurgent credit markets to delay the day of reckoning.
Sponsors routinely promise their backers that they’ll at least double their money. But you’d be hard-pressed to find such funds in the hard-luck 2007 vintage.
Investment Partner Kohlberg & Co. The 2007 vintage was a rough one for domestic buyout funds. Between the credit crunch, financial crisis and Great Recession, firms had their work cut out just to score a modest profit. But some firms managed to do far better than that. Below we have five questions for an executive at […]
Investors who routinely take a pass on debut buyout funds would readily admit they miss out on the occasional blockbuster. But they may also be missing out on returns that over time consistently beat market averages.
1)     You released the latest revised version of your Private Equity Principles in January 2011, which provide LPs a template for best practices in terms and conditions. What’s been the impact on terms and conditions negotiated by GPs and LPs? As you know I’m not privy to the conversations between LPs and GPs. However, anecdotally, the feedback […]
You won’t find headlines touting dividend recaps in the “media room” of Roark Capital Group’s Web site. But the Atlanta buyout shop hasn’t been shy about promoting them to investors contemplating a commitment to a third fund targeting $1.25 billion.
On conference panels, in interviews, through surveys, limited partners routinely telegraph the notion that they prefer the small and mid-sized to the mega. But the fundraising numbers this year tell a different story.
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