Phil Canfield of GTCR on Fund Expiration Dates and the Coming M&A Influx
I recently spoke with Philip Canfield, a principal at GTCR, on M&A bullishness, GTCR's pipeline, why the fundraising market isn't so bad for everyone, GTCR's next fund equity checks on its recent deals, and the healthcare reform bill. What's your outlook for M&A in 2010? We think the year will be robust for M&A activity. It will be fueled by a few things. Number one: a rebound in valuations. A year ago all the buyers wanted to buy cheap, but no sellers were willing to sell. Now it's an environment where buyers think prices are reasonable and sellers agree and there's a crossroad to transact. Number two, you have a fair bit of liquidity in the market. On the financing side, starting early last summer you saw a big rebound in high yield markets. That has continued and led to a rebound in other credit markets, like the bank loan and CLO markets. The other component is that you have a trillion dollars of cash on the balance sheets of S&P 500 companies, and in private equity, you have half a trillion of committed but uncalled capital. That money starts going away by next year and is gone by 2013-- Can you clarify that? It expires. Most funds have a five year commitment period for new investments, and much of that half a trillion of committed, uncalled capital was raised in '06 and ‘07. So once you get out to 2014, that money will have to be invested or sent back to investors. There's a tremendous incentive for private equity firms to do deals.
