A Congressional oversight committee on Friday issued a report that was harshly critical of how Hank Paulson & Co. spent the initial monies, arguing that they only got around 60 cents worth of value for every dollar spent. Most of the media reports quote Elizabeth Warren, a Harvard professor who chaired the study. What they fail to note, however, is that a private equity pro was an integral part of actually valuing the purchased assets. That pro was Adam Blumenthal, a co-founding managing partner of Blue Wolf Capital Management and former first deputy comptroller of the City of New York. Blumenthal was recruited late last year by David Silvers, associate general council of the AFL-CIO (Blue Wolf has tight union relationships). He says that the original task seemed daunting
1 min read · 09 February 2009
Private equities still outperform public equities, according to new data from Thomson Reuters (publisher of peHUB). On the other hand, that's a bit like saying that you only lost three fingers instead of five, or that at least your house fire didn't spread to the toolshed. The numbers are through Q3 '08, so take them with a giant grain of anachrony (PE returns will drop like stones in the next report): Buyout performance fell from both the prior quarter and the prior year, but still came in at positive 12.2% for the five-year horizon. This dropped to 8.3% for the three-year horizon and -8.2% for the one-year horizon. Each of these figures compares favorably to the S&P 500 and NASDAQ over the same period. This is even true once venture capital performance is thrown into the mix. Get more data after the jump...
1 min read · 06 February 2009
Carlyle Group co-founder David Rubenstein spoke at the SuperReturn 2009 conference in Berlin earlier this week (submit a better name here), and argued that the global credit meltdown had changed private equity... for the better. View his presentation after the jump:
1 min read · 06 February 2009
Some private equity pros might have worried that they'd be scapegoated by the Obama Administration, but so far it seems to be quite the opposite. In fact, some of them are being taken into the fold as confidants. President Obama today signed an executive order establishing an Economic Recovery Advisory Board, which is designed to provide independent advice outside of the Beltway bubble. It's kind of like an economic version of the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, which was established by Eisenhower. Among the 15 board members are John Doerr, a venture capitalist with Kleiner Perkins, and Mark Gallogly, a former Blackstone Group pro who now runs private equity firm Centerbridge Capital. Even the limited partner community is (sort of) represented, by Yale chief investment officer David Swensen.
1 min read · 06 February 2009
1 min read · 06 February 2009
Yesterday, we shared private equity fund returns from the University of Texas Investment Management Co. (UTIMCO). Today, the man ultimately responsible for overseeing those investments is out of a job. Robert Rowling, chairman of the UTIMCO board, resigned this morning, in the midst of a Texas state senate hearing about the system's falling capitalization. The decision did not seem planned out, but instead was a reaction to intense grilling over UTIMCO's decision to pay performance bonuses to members of its investment staff.
2 min read · 05 February 2009
Private equity firms Audax Group and Cortec Group were among those scammed by Bernie Madoff, according to a 162-page customer list filed yesterday with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in New York (download here). Also ripped off was a hedge fund managed by Thomas H. Lee, institutional consultancy Cambridge Associates and legendary venture capitalist Arthur Rock. peHUB contacted Marc Wolpow, a co-CEO of Audax Group, who said the following: “We did not have any of our limited partners' -- or investors' – funds invested in Madoff. Audax is not a feeder fund. Our business is to invest in companies, not other funds. Thus I can assure you that our investors do not have any exposure (either direct or indirect) to Madoff through their investment in any Audax fund. Geoff Rehnert and I, along with so many others, did invest a small portion
2 min read · 05 February 2009
The PE Week Wire is our daily email service, and predates peHUB by quite a few years. Today it hit the 50k subscriber mark, which is a milestone we're pretty proud of. Usually I use these "another thousand" occasions to hype one of our paid services (like peHUB Premium subscriptions), but today I’m going to do something different: First, tell you the email's genesis -- because so many of you ask when we meet in person -- and then make an announcement:
2 min read · 05 February 2009
The University of Texas Investment Management Co. (UTIMCO) does not publish private equity performance data on its website, but is extremely responsive if you submit an Open Records request. In fact, it even saves you postage by providing this online form. I recently filled it out, and today received a bunch of documents related to the system's investments in venture capital and buyout firms. And because selfishness is ugly, I've posted them after the jump. As always, before the dreaded J-curves...
1 min read · 04 February 2009
peHUB has learned that venture capitalist Tony Sun is leaving Venrock, where he’s been working since 1979. A firm spokeswoman has confirmed the information, but also stressed that his departure isn't coming anytime soon. Sun will actually leave Venrock in the middle of next year, which also is around the same time that the firm expects to be raising a new fund (last one raised in 2007). In other words, it sounds like an orderly retirement. It's also worth noting that Venrock partner Rich Moran will transition into an executive-in-residence role within the next four or five months. Among his immediate plans
1 min read · 04 February 2009
