May issue

News highlights

Corporate venturing comeback?

Raising the profile of SMEs

Global Asset Capital gets Viventures

Budget addresses funding gap

Venture philanthropy makes UK debut

DB Capital FoFs migrates to DeAM

Buyouts dominate Italian PE scene

Funds

La Poste defies corporate VC downturn

Regional Irish seed fund launched

RLPE makes fund debut

Duchess II closes at €550m

Take two for Opera

B&S reaches €500m

Exits

Terra Firma struggles with Le Meridien

Sale values IT Masters at $42m

Interregnum scores with uDate

Secondary buyout of NCC

FRANCE SUPPLEMENT

Louise Cowley takes a look at the latest developments on the French venture capital and private equity scene.

Features

Switzerland: Small but well formed

With a population of just seven million Swiss company executives have always looked beyond their natural borders to grow their companies. This is one of the reasons private equity and venture capital investors have found the country to be a ground for hunting out new investment opportunities. Lisa Bushrod reports

Financial Services: The lone rangers

Many early stage players have lost their appetite for the financial services sector since for them it is fundamentally a technology-driven market. But later stage opportunities are attracting more interest as banks look to consolidate spending and some of their established providers of services look like they could go out of business. Angela Sormani reports

Technology

What do European LPs make of the whirlwind reshaping the technology industry? Andrew Sheehy reports

Buyouts

Invoice discounting: growing use and sophistication

The market for factoring and invoice discounting in Europe is now worth around €475 billion, according to the International Factoring Group. A financing solution traditionally associated with smaller companies, invoice discounting is a growing industry, funding increasingly large and sophisticated transactions. Louise Cowley looks at what this type of debt offers the buyout market.

LP Corner

Asset allocation: back to the basics

The private equity industry is in a mess, Many LPs don’t know whether they are coming or going. Angela Sormani explains the problems and how LPs are likely to try and extricate themselves from them.

Legal & Regulatory Exchange

Pension funds: worth the worry?

Pensions are a big issue across continental Europe and while all the stories, ranging from the region’s ageing population to how schemes are funded, might seem to have little to do with private equity investing in fact the reverse is true. It’s precisely because most European governments are aware of the issue and starting to pay at least lip service to solving the problem that investors should worry. Since, for governments, solving the problem generally means one or a combination of two things; cutting back on state provision and passing the lion’s share of the problem onto the private sector. Buyout players are increasingly reporting that the time and money spent on pensions due diligence has got to the stage of being burdensome. But is it worth the time and money?, asks Lisa Bushrod.

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