The temptation of another private equity musical license was too strong to resist – the titles of some of the most famous songs and albums of one of my favorite rock groups may seem to have been made on purpose to introduce and comment upon certain highly debated arguments in the PE industry. Continue reading
Duration adjusted Return on Capital
Hey Hey My My, Private Equity Can Never Die
One of the likely most memorable achievements of David Rubenstein will be not about private equity, in the strict sense – it will be the rap he sang in the Carlyle’s 2014 Holiday message to investors. Musical license for musical license, he might as well have come up with a rock song to introduce his recent predictions about the evolution private equity industry. Neil Young would forgive that it is me instead to “use” the song for a few related comments. Continue reading
Stranded Capital, Fire Sales Or….
I wrote in my previous post that actual durations of PE funds are longer than those that are the perceived industry standards. The 14-year number reported in the headline of an article of a recognised magazine is a different thing, but it ties well and allows some reasoning about LP extensions, fire sales and the possible rational alternatives for investors. Continue reading
PE Duration Disambiguated (Smooth Capital)
Getting responses to questionnaires is an art and I can’t say I master it. Nevertheless, I had a few especially kind readers of my previous post who contributed their opinion (thanks!) to the embedded polls. Their results make it more interesting and “independent” to define “surprising” certain different data available in the industry. Continue reading
The PE S-Curve, Dug Out
There are a couple of concepts that qualify a discovery – even if just stumbled upon: novelty and usefulness. With respect to private equity, the S-Curve adds the notion of decreasing marginal returns to improve the mainstream J-Curve notion, and this clears novelty. What’s left now is to dig out its usefulness. Continue reading
The PE S-Curve, Stumbled Upon
Unexpectedly last week, I stumbled upon an S-Curve hidden between the lines of a study released by an established private equity funds of funds firm with a cautious introductory question: “do private equity funds sometimes just run out of steam?” Continue reading
IRR Is Like Fish
IRR is like fish, when someone gets hold of it, it slips away. Hard to seize, hard to terminate – with incredible survival instinct, it tries to jump out of any bucket where it has been secluded. Continue reading
