Private Equity
My corporate overlords have quietly signed an agreement with Hamilton Lane, to improve the quality of their private equity benchmarking data. This is a very welcome development, as the sample pools have been a bit shallow of late. The deal is basically that Hamilton Lane will lean on its GPs to voluntarily provide data, first via letters and then via phone calls. The consultant considered doing something like this a few years back with S&P, but it didn’t work out. It then considered going solo, but decided that Thomson Reuters had a good mousetrap that needed to be bulked up.
1 min read · 15 July 2010
Over the past day, private companies have announced over $324 million in new venture capital funding. That's really remarkable, particularly when you consider that the largest disclosed deal (Atlassian) was only $60 million... Is it just "timing" groupthink by PR flacks, or is Q3 going to be a blow-out?
1 min read · 15 July 2010
1 min read · 15 July 2010
Well, it’s official: KKR is listed on the New York Stock Exchange, and was up nearly 1% in early trading. Guess this means we’re in for a slew of Blackstone vs. KKR stories at the end of each quarter (and I’ll probably write half of them)… Those who buy KKR shares expect to be taking indrect part of big-dollar leveraged buyouts, but now it seems they also might be getting a piece of smaller deals. The firm recently sent out books for the KKR China Growth Fund, which will write equity checks of between $35 million and $75 million for companies in Mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. This is different than the $4 billion KKR Asian Fund, raised in 2007 and primarily focused on big buyouts throughout Asia (China, Japan, India, Australia, Korea, etc.).
2 min read · 15 July 2010
Paul Roales, an associate with Pearl Street Venture Funds, is the latest venture capitalist to run for elective office. He's the Democratic Party nominee to represent Indiana's 26th District in the state legislature. May not sound like too big a deal, but Karl Rove would disagree. In a March column for the Wall Street Journal, Rove wrote: Some of the most important contests this fall will be way down the ballot in communities like Portsmouth, Ohio and West Lafayette, Ind., and neighborhoods like Brushy Creek in Round Rock, Texas, and Murrysville Township in Westmoreland County, Pa. These are state legislative races that will determine who redraws congressional district lines after this year's census, a process that could determine which party controls upwards of 20 seats and whether many other seats will be competitive.
1 min read · 14 July 2010
Expect a slew of KKR stories in the general biz press over the next 24 hours, as the buyout behemoth transfers its listing from Amsterdam to New York. Most of them will probably focus on what the move signals about the private equity market. Let me save you some time: Nothing. That said, two things to watch:
1 min read · 14 July 2010
The NVCA and Deloitte today released results of a global VC sentiment survey, which measured opinions of more than 500 global venture capitalists. Not surprisingly, 90% of U.S. VCs expected to see the number of firms to shrink over the next five years, while most of those in China, India and Brazil expect growth. Among cited problems in the U.S. were difficulties in achieving successful exits (88%), unfavorable tax policies (59%) and unstable regulatory policy (53%). On the upside, most lauded government-funded R&D efforts and an “improving entrepreneurial environment.”
1 min read · 14 July 2010
For a very long time, venture capitalists reveled in their exclusivity. They took meetings with those they knew, or those who came personally recommended. Then they went golfing, and let inexperienced entrepreneurs fend for themselves. Over the past year, however, the venture capital market has undergone something of an accessibility revolution. Office hours, institutional incubators, socially-networked superangels, no-cost elevator pitch events and more. The latest step in the right direction comes tomorrow morning, when Bain Capital Ventures launches an online "Innovation Center" for early-stage entrepreneurs.
2 min read · 13 July 2010
The VC-backed IPO pipeline was drained over the past month, with five VC-backed companies going public and two more withdrawing their offerings. Those companies represented around $1 billion in planned raise, while the month's two new registrants only plan to raise a total of $215 million. There also were two China-based issuers who both filed and priced within the month (HiSoft and AutoNavi). All of this means the current VC-backed IPO pipeline has 39 companies seeking to raise nearly $3.4 billion. That's the lowest dollar expectation since we began keeping track back in January. The full pipeline is after the jump..
10 min read · 13 July 2010
The Florida State Board of Administration has agreed to acquire a minority ownership stake in Lexington Partners, peHUB has learned. It is believed to be the first time that a state pension fund outside of California has bought into a private equity firm's management company. "Florida has had a multi-pronged relationship with Lexington for a long time, so from that perspective it's not to surprising," explained a source familiar with the deal. "But when you consider how poorly most other deals like this have performed, it's got to make you wonder why Florida would want to double-down on a single firm." Neither Lexington nor Florida is commenting on the deal, but our understanding is that the deal is for a 9.9% ownership position at an enterprise value of around $1.8 billion (consider that last figure to be ballpark -- a very spacious ballpark).
1 min read · 13 July 2010
