ryanhui@shuntakgroup.com

Welcome to our quarterly wrap-up issue, which could just as well be called “view from the peak.” What we saw in the second quarter — just like in the first quarter — is strong deal activity driven by aggressive general partners and hyper fundraising boosted by hungry limited partners. It’s all a function of the strong markets […]

Key-person provisions lately are a hotly debated topic, with some GPs setting up several individuals, rather than one or two, as key people on a fund. This has the effect, at least from the LP perspective, of diluting the impact of a key-person provision. After all, a key-person provision that names one or two people […]

A megadeal doesn’t happen in isolation. It doesn’t just emerge on the scene, everyone gawks, it gets done, and then everyone goes back to what they were doing. It has consequences. And in the private equity secondaries market, the advent of the $5 billion megadeal is likely to have a major impact. Two megadeals are […]

Warren Buffett has long been a critic of private equity, and he was at it again this month at Berkshire Hathaway’s annual meeting, according to Bloomberg. Buffett questioned private equity’s performance calculations and cast doubt on the legitimacy of using internal rate of return as a measure of performance. He argued that firms will include […]

Alex Navab earlier this month launched his new firm, Navab Capital Partners. The announcement did not mention a fund, but I reported back in February that the chatter among LPs at the time was the debut fund could target $3 billion to $4 billion. Sources tell me Navab’s likely target would be $3 billion, if and […]

The massive flow of capital into private markets is having an interesting effect, according to Hugh MacArthur of Bain & Co. It’s boosting the average multiple of Ebitda of private assets above that of public assets for the first time since the era just before the global financial crisis. Generally, investors are willing to pay […]

You know, Dear Reader, that I love talking to limited partners. First off, the LPs I talk to are generally good peoples, and you don’t always run across good peoples in life. Secondly, they know a lot of stuff, and they don’t sugarcoat it, spin it, mask it, or otherwise attempt to distort important information […]

SBIC is one of those programs that it’s hard not to like. The program, run by the Small Business Administration, matches a manager’s private capital with government debt $2 for every $1 of private investor capital. So if a manager raised $87.5 million from limited partners, the program kicks in $175 million. That’s a powerful […]

Every year the secondary market seems to hit another milestone. Last year will be known as the one in which the “7” number was broken. Estimated secondary market deal volume in 2018 vaulted $70 billion, according to two surveys published Jan. 24 by Evercore and Setter Capital. That would be the highest level ever in the […]

We thought we’d start the year off right: talking about limited partners and how they’re viewing private equity. From the looks of things, LPs aren’t pulling back from the asset class even a little bit. We ran through some of the largest public systems in the country to find out what they’re up to. Most […]