private equity

Much of Mr Romney's fortune, which some estimate at $250m, is thought to come from his stint in private equity, but no one knows how much.

"Fee percentages have failed to adjust to the increasing absolute size of private equity funds, " he said.

That, Mr. Schwarzman said, is 'one of those things that makes private equity so special, ' he said.

Ericsson was one of three bidders in Friday's auction. Nokia Siemens Networks and private equity firm MatlinPatterson were its competitors.

He said private equity investment in NSN "could be a good lever for its future business development" .

Dodd-Frank could have been worse for JPM, which will, for instance, be able to hold onto its sizeable private-equity investments.

Washington-based Carlyle is one of a few powerful private equity groups actively scouting for Chinese companies.

The bank recently announced it had been unable to agree a deal with private equity groups.

Mr Vandevelde says private equity has the advantage of being able to ride out the difficulties of a bad season, as it invests for 3-6 years.

Management have rejected the idea of a private equity buy-out, but have still been forced to call an EGM to explain themselves next month.

This alarm bell, though, does not seem to have rattled private equity managers.

Just a few weeks ago Carlyle, a large private - equity firm, announced that it would open shop there.

"It was hard enough for Bain to enter this investment, but imagine how much harder an exit could be, " said one private equity dealmaker.

China has recently opened up to private equity firms, as foreign firms have finally been allowed to raise yuan-denominated funds.

There is often less criticism of western private equity firms than of private Russian enterprises.

The only asset classes in which investors planned to increase their holdings over the next three years were hedge funds and private equity.

The purpose of the company is to be the best Private Equity Fund Company with global influence and investment ability in the world.

The credit crunch does not seem to have affected confidence in private equity in Asia.

The private equity business, one of the iconic businesses of the boom, is struggling with a deep slump of its own.

Private equity activity in Asia, like the rest of the world, has ground to a near halt, hit by the economic slowdown and credit crisis.

'The advice we and most other banks are giving private-equity firms is 'get ready to take advantage of the market opportunity.

Indeed, in earlier cycles, private equity firms have been aggressive about trying to reform ailing financial groups.

Mr. Cohen, for instance, has 3% of his assets in a private-equity portfolio, which he accumulated over the last several years.

My prize for honesty goes to Jon Moulton, the private equity tycoon, who has made enough money to be able to say what he likes.

He said the body was likely to focus on specialist fund managers in areas such as private equity, commodities and real estate.

Mr. Chen's departure is seen as a potential blow to U. S. private-equity firm Bain Capital, which had a strong alliance with Mr. Chen.

"Private equity firms are investing in fewer companies and able to take fewer out in public markets, " said Deignan.

The result was that even those private-equity firms with access to capital found that deals were not as cheap as they might have hoped.

People familiar with the matter said that he had in recent months been considering setting up a private equity fund.

China was supposed to provide a lucrative outlet for global private equity firms trying to wring returns from portfolio companies back home.

It is not the only inscrutable country to be cosying up to the inscrutable private-equity industry.

It sounds like just the sort of trick they might have picked up from private-equity firms.

"Excess liquidity in private equity has created temptation like there has never been temptation before, " he says.

All this at a time when companies acquired by private equity last time round are sliding into default in record numbers.

Mr Romney, no doubt sensitised by his background in private equity, wants green cards "stapled" to advanced science degrees.

Not to be excluded are at least two other private equity firms that have requested J Crew's financial records.

Private equity is private. The scale and influence of PE is now so great that it has been unable to remain secretive.

He said Geely had a "deep understanding of the auto industry" and more patience about return on investment than private equity owners.

Try to extract money from a hedge fund manager or the founder of a private equity fund and he loses all sense of proportion.

Other possibilities include a cash sale of Chrysler to private equity or industry investors, and a flotation of the money-losing unit.

As if in reply, dealmakers are now keen to stress that the non-financial returns to private equity are also super.

That said, the going remains far from easy for private equity firms in Asia, even in Australia.

The city is trying to attract foreign private-equity firms to set up shop in Shanghai.

Carlyle is one of the last of the giant private equity firms expected to go public in the near future.

As a result, emerging markets private equity activity tends to be limited to equity stakes, with maybe some mezzanine debt on top.

That is one of several signs in recent weeks that the wind may be starting to blow in a better direction for private equity.

According to people familiar with the matter, interested private equity firms include Carlyle Group and Oaktree, the US fund groups.

But another technology banker who declined to be named said it might be hard for private equity firms to justify such investments.

It was for this reason that the Private Equity Foundation was formed in 2006, in "a time of plenty" .

Last August Philips announced that it was selling a majority holding of its semiconductor business to a private-equity buy-out led by KKR.

AIG executives spent the weekend trying to raise cash, either from asset sales or a capital infusion from private-equity firms, or both.

After all, investors in private-equity funds are typically locked in for at least five years and no one plans to sell now.

Such a new approach could provide the private equity industry with a swathe of fresh capital from Asian countries.

"New Zealand is a nexus between India and China, " he said at this week's New Zealand Private Equity Venture Capital Association conference.

It is possible for asset classes to be uncorrelated when they are small, as private-equity groups and hedge funds still were in the 1990s.

BTG provided the Carlyle Group, a private-equity firm, with a boss for a packaged-goods firm it owns when it needed one in a hurry.

As a weapon of corporate mass destruction, private equity's place in history seems assured.

The break-up of these monsters into more manageable components would be a boon for private-equity deal makers.

Both owners stressed the private equity interest was unsolicited and cautioned it was far from certain a deal would be reached.

Indeed, since the end of July, discussions about large private equity takeovers have virtually ground to a halt, say Wall Street bankers.

Goldman suffered a setback this year when its local partner decided to set up his own private equity fund.

Friends and family members said he had turned down equally eye-popping pay packages from the heads of private equity firms.

In recent years there has been a convergence of financial services involving private equity firms, hedge funds and investment banks.

The first part of the basic content of private equity funds, including the concept of private equity funds, the legal characteristics.

Quite why private equity billionaires pay lower rates of tax than their cleaning ladies do on their wages has long been a puzzle.

Private equity bidders have not been a factor in the auctions of failing banks in recent months.

Worse, China's private-equity industry has become another lucrative billet for the children of powerful officials.

But in the long term, it would be a good thing if they could not compete on pay with small private equity and hedge funds.

However, more recently, there has been a noticeable shift towards onshore investments by private equity investors.

Britain, by far the largest private-equity market in the region, slides to third place in the latest survey (see chart above).

To the extent that private-equity groups release capital from unprofitable firms and supply it to thriving ones, so much the better.

The ambitious and the avaricious will no doubt seek more ex- citing hunting grounds with hedge funds and private equity groups.

Private equity funds accounted for a highest-ever $460bn of that. The role of sovereign wealth funds in direct investment was $10bn.

J. Crew is part-owned by Texas Pacific, a private-equity firm and one of the potential buyers if Gap were put up for sale.

Packed with people from business, it acts as a sort of national private-equity fund, with assets and credit guarantees totalling $9 billion.

China is opening up to foreign private-equity firms, but the promised land is no paradise yet.

They know it would be a sure-fire recipe for disaster - destroying value and fatally compromising the private equity business model.

For years, China was the undisputed favorite child of the emerging markets private equity world with India following close on its heels.

Mr Tronconi thinks private equity will play a role in rescuing the industry, but he is not content to leave it to outsiders.

The next day eBay sold a 65% stake in its internet-phone unit, Skype, for $1. 9 billion, to a group of private-equity investors.

The burgeoning hedge fund and private equity industries are both a cause and a symptom of a dangerously lopsided America.

Faced with all this, most private-equity firms are doing a decent job of getting the companies they own into better shape.

One in 10 investors in private equity are likely to default on commitments to invest funds in the next two years, research has suggested.

Once upon a time, 'private equity' was closed to all but the wealthiest individuals and institutions.

For now, with Chinese banks offering so much credit to companies, turning to private equity is less of a priority for China Inc.

A wave of refinancing that will hit private-equity-owned firms over the next few years may prove profitable for distressed-debt funds.

In Asia at least, private-equity bets resemble early-stage growth investment rather than the leveraged buy-outs of the boom.

That leaves private equity in the tough position of having to justify its place in the region's financial markets.

It turned into a bank holding company, and then a financial holding company to allow it to keep, among other things, its private equity arm.

Carried interest is not the only concern weighing on the minds of private-equity bigwigs.

Private-equity firms have been searching for companies whose share prices have been caught in the general downdraft.

The reports of the Shareholder Executive read rather like the updates a private equity house might prepare for investors.

When private equity was in its pomp, strategic corporate buyers often found themselves priced out of the market.

It is no coincidence that the only other scheme comes from Blackstone, its listed private equity rival.

If the private-equity firm once memorably described as the "Barbarians at the Gate" [5] can turn into a tree-hugger, why not hedge funds?

The fastest growth came from private-equity, which raised $53 billion in three months, two-thirds more than a year earlier.

"At least for private equity, the worst is behind the industry, " it quoted him as saying.

Beijing is trying to develop a domestic private equity sector.

The shortage in bank capital has nothing to do with rules that private-equity investors or banks themselves deem to be unfriendly.

In one end trundle aircraft fuselages that have come by rail from a former Boeing factory in Kansas now owned by a private-equity company.

Today private-equity types are quick to admit things got out of control, just as in the buy-out booms of the late 1980s and 1990s.

One of the biggest and most lucrative private equity deals in Asia is hanging in the balance just weeks from its closing date.

The private-equity firm has since struggled with its investment and needs to raise funds to avoid defaulting on a bank loan backed by EMI.

The ratings agency worries that the deal, one of the year's biggest involving private equity, will increase Del Monte's debt.

China's CIC seemed to have scored when it paid $3 billion for a stake in Blackstone, a private-equity group that listed its shares.

But Mr Rubenstein is not alone in thinking that private-equity firms are "much better prepared for a slowdown" than they were.

Every week a billion-dollar hedge fund or private equity firm seems to announce an office there.

The Skype investment is one of the largest capital gains made on a private equity investment, the source said.

This studio structure stems from his experience with Elevation Partners, the private equity firm he moved to in Redwood Shores.

with money pouring into private equity at a dizzying rate , it is hard to wipe the smiles off the faces of its practitioners.

Optimists will take all that as further evidence of private equity's bright hopes.

Nigel McConnell, managing partner of Cognetas in the UK, says private equity is going back to how it was in the early 1990s.

Private equity is very entrepreneurial and each person needs to be commercially savvy and able to make decisions on their own.

In Australia, private-equity firms pulled out at the last minute from the country's biggest takeover, complaining of the high cost of debt.

Logic suggests a lot of companies owned by private equity must be on the point of expiring under the weight of their debt.

One of the main metrics by which private equity firms are valued is the size of assets under management.

Warner Music Group, a major music company partly owned by a consortium of private-equity firms, is reportedly putting itself up for sale.

GIC has invested more than $100 billion of government reserves into a portfolio of stocks, commodities, bonds and private-equity stakes.

With graduation now imminent, Mr Nasser is having to consider other career paths: "Private equity is no longer an option, " he says.

The GAO is now working on another report, in which it will evaluate the adequacy of the care provided in homes bought by private equity.

The era of bountiful credit began to unravel a matter of weeks after the kings of private equity partially cashed-out.

None of the above, though, accounts wholly for the behaviour of US bankers in extending soft loans to private equity.

What is now often referred to as China's private equity industry is a mixed bag.

The company has been talking about a sale to Brazilian protein producer JBS and has attracted interest from private equity buyers.

Alternatively, although mega caps may be too large to be targeted by private equity, boards may be pressured to copy the barbarians' model.

Boeing cut the cost of making fuselages by selling a factory in Wichita to a private-equity consortium, which drastically cut costs.

The former financing arm of General Motors is now partly owned by private-equity firms and is terribly thinly capitalised.

"I never looked at us as being in the private-equity business, " says Mr Schwarzman. "You invent new areas to be in. "

Several bankers at western groups have quit senior roles over the past two years to set up private equity funds focused on the China market.

It is less clear whether private equity has been a universal boon for its investors or for financial markets generally.

After graduating -- in two years -- he started investing in stocks, bonds and early forms of private equity.

'I'm writing a book. . . on the financial crisis in China, ' he said on the sidelines of a private-equity forum in Beijing.

Rival global private equity firms have had little luck since then in sourcing or securing Chinese approval for large mainland deals.

With the value of their once-prized assets plunging, many private-equity firms have decided to reduce the paper value of their investments.

The transactions of Private Equity Investors and Hedge Funds are having a strong impact on the short term movements in the capital markets.

Kohlberg Kravis Roberts founding partner Henry Kravis even found it necessary to declare in January that 'private equity is not dead. '

The report also believes that in 2009 hedge, private equity and other funds will be downsized and (or) to adjust their business activities.

But for private equity investors looking for returns, China remains the flavour of the moment.

Out-of-state executives at private-equity and venture-capital firms would also be targeted.

In Congress Barney Frank, the new Democratic chairman of the powerful House finance committee, is due to hold hearings on private equity.

Despite rock-bottom levels of interest rates, many companies, especially in private equity, discovered they were financially vulnerable.

and a portfolio with international diversification but without the illiquid private-equity, hedge-fund and real-estate portions.

For now, private-equity and hedge-fund executives, whose money-management empires can afford the steep rent, occupy much of the building.

No longer are private-equity firms attempting merely to turn round ailing industrial giants.

Nufarm is one of several agrochemical companies targeted by private-equity firms amid an industry consolidation.

Private equity has been one of the best-performing asset classes in recent years, attracting record investments.

One of the outcomes is to avoid a situation where private equity becomes a political punching bag.

It was the first and last time that private equity had bid on an entire U. S. sports league.

Even so, it's not going to be easy. Especially because I'm not sure these private equity guys are as smart as everyone makes them out to be.

It's also a linchpin of the investment strategies of a growing number of hedge- and private-equity funds.

Mr. Malik has over 10 years of experience in private equity investments as well as mergers and acquisitions in Asia.

It may also see a chance to snap up stakes in other private-equity firms through the fast-growing secondary market for limited partnerships.

ETIC officials say it is no rival to private equity, since it funds firms that private equity on its own would avoid.

Private-equity and venture-capital jobs, always hard to land, have had virtually no positions to offer this year.

Selwyn Gishen is a trader with more than 15 years of experience trading forex and equities for a private equity fund.

"China welcomes private equity capital and is a great market for Carlyle, " the private equity firm's spokesman Christopher Ullman said.

The deal is one of several such tie-ups as foreign private equity groups seek to tap into the fast-growing Chinese market.

The investment is only the second by China Investment Corp, which bought a pre-IPO stake in Blackstone, the US private equity firm, in May.

A number of US private equity managers, including Blackstone and KKR, are thought to be scrutinising Fortress's float.

Today the company is struggling to avoid becoming the UK's highest-profile private equity failure.

A bit like a Chinese private equity funds or private investment company.

Huawei is keen to sell a sizeable stake to a private equity firm to help the division boost US sales.

As the flow of cash back from private equity has slowed in the absence of debt-fuelled deals, investors have become more cautious.

As the young man explained hedge funds, private equity, mezzanine finance, leveraged deals and short-selling, Mr Monks's eyes widened.

For foreign private-equity firms, the risk of coping with a rogue detained controlling shareholder might seem almost welcome by comparison.

And up until recently, Corzine was an operating partner at Flowers private equity firm.

"This is completely new, " he said. "We realised that they have no direct allocation at all in China private equity. "

Private equity in the Alpine republic is still in its infancy, but has become big business in neighbouring Germany over the past decade.

Blackstone has warned of a slowdown in large private equity takeovers due to the upheaval in credit markets.

A brief rally in late December and January, when the company revealed the private equity approaches, proved short-lived.

For investors eager to put more money into private equity, the club deals have raised concerns about risk concentration.

They economised on equity via buy-backs and by leveraging up to the gills, especially in banking and private equity.

This is one of the arguments used to extol the merits of private equity, which relies heavily on debt finance.

Research in the US demonstrates this: initial public offerings of private equity-backed firms perform better than IPOs in general.

The company is owned by a private equity fund and individual shareholders.

But now, though buying Dow would set a new record for private equity, it would not be by much.

Private equity firms rarely make investments without a clear exit plan and the most obvious would be to take CICC public.

Private equity firms do create value, albeit with a heavy assist from financial engineering.

Mr Gao arrived in San Francisco on Monday, en route to Aspen for a conference organised by the private equity mogul Teddy Forstmann.

That private equity funds denominated in yuan will one day dominate China's market is no longer a question.

New Page and Verso are not the only paper companies held by private equity firms.

But private-equity returns are not really very "alternative" , since the forces that drive them also drive the stockmarket.

It also allocates chunks of its portfolio to other direct investments as well as private-equity and venture-capital funds.

Private equity investors frustrated with these regulatory hurdles are increasingly looking at onshore investments instead.

Taiwan's domestic banking industry sucked in much of this investment, with several global private equity firms striking deals.

Private equity investment in India and the Middle East is further complicated by the tendency for businesses to be family owned.

It recently agreed to put more than $2. 5bn into a fund run by private equity firm TPG.

To boost returns, Wall Street banks also took greater risks in the form of proprietary trading and private equity investments.

Following abortive bids by a brace of private equity firms, Telefonica of Spain is now mulling taking a stake.

For now, the Golden Age of private equity is over, the financiers say.

Of course, private equity ownership is not going to be to every executive's liking.

The stock price of Blackstone, a rival private-equity firm that went public in 2007, has tumbled to less than a third of its listing price.

One of Goldman's private-equity arms Wednesday said it will invest $245 million in Geely through a convertible bond.

They are increasingly also turning to China's burgeoning private equity industry for funds to help them expand beyond the country's borders.

"Teaming up is always good in the good days, but it becomes very ugly in the bad days, " says a partner in a big private-equity firm.

To take just one salient contemporary example, the least that managers of private equity or hedge funds can earn is the management fee.

The latest example came yesterday when Eastman Kodak sold its healthcare arm to the Canadian private equity group Onex for up to $2. 55bn.

As a result, private-equity firms are likely to have a lot of time to put things right if one of their firms gets into trouble.

ALONG with the rest of the finance industry, the private-equity business has endured a miserable couple of years.

Most private equity shops are sitting on their hands, unsure whether to plunge in now would be an act of madness or genius.

Ms Qu said the Shanghai city government is also planning an outbound private equity fund of Rmb10bn.

The question is: Will private equity's fate in China resemble that of the global auto companies?

Betsy Ludwig was on the fast track at a small private equity firm and determined to climb the career ladder all the way to the top.

Analysts said it was rare for a bank to hire an entire team in what has become a tight market for Asian private equity talent.

So far, private equity firms have been able to avoid disaster with their existing investments in the US, many of which carry a lot of debt.

It is a listed company that behaves like a private-equity firm, using its own capital rather than borrowing.

Taking on less patient Chinese limited partners will leave private equity firms with a dilemma over resource allocation.

No one is feeling this more keenly than private equity fund managers, who are among the best-paid of all intermediaries.

Among targets of these predators are many of the less happy purchases made by the world's most renowned private equity firms.

NOT so long ago, most fund managers riding the private-equity wave were squeamish about appearing in public.

The bank became a leader in financing private equity buy-outs and lent heavily for commercial property deals.

Although credit markets are reopening, they are not yet ready to lend heavily to private-equity firms.

The result of this ingenuity includes "special purpose vehicles" , hedge funds and even, in some respects, private equity funds.

Bankers who have dealt with Mr Fang and his colleagues reserve less praise for the description of Hopu as a private equity fund.

Lord knows, the Obama Administration is not going to bail out hedge funds, CDOs, private equity firms (Cerberus? ), or Donald Trump.

It's looking more and more as if the private equity phenomenon was a classic Wall Street bubble.

In 2005, Mr Hellendrung - along with a group of angel investors and local private equity firms - bought the company.

Hedge funds, private equity groups and other investors are increasingly looking to put money into the film business.

On Thursday, Blackstone sold $600 million of 10-year senior bonds, the firm's first bond sale and a rare move for a private-equity firm.

Morgan Stanley said it would unveil details of its renminbi-denominated China private equity fund next week.

Beyond the risk of a crash, hedge funds and private equity operators are driving the wrong brand of capitalism.

This has not exactly been a banner six months for private equity in China, '' says David Brown, partner at PwC.

In recent years, a growing percentage of the money for US private equity firms has come from overseas.

Sunshine expansion of private equity limited to big-name consultants or past performance is outstanding among a small number of companies.

Cerberus, the US private equity group, will pay $7. 4bn, but most of that will be injected as new equity into the separated Chrysler group.

The private-equity firm retaliated by warning investment banks that they would be blacklisted if they funded the creditors.

It was first announced in June 2007, at the tail-end of a private-equity boom and at about the time that the credit crunch started.

Industry sources said private equity firms could take over the U. S. operations and sell Yahoo's Asian assets to a buyer such as Alibaba.

Management fee: Charge made by general partners to limited partners in the administration of a private equity fund.

But as private equity becomes an ever bigger player, its operators are running into the law of large numbers.

LDC is one of the UK's biggest private equity investors in small- to mid-sized companies.

"They had a lot of growing pains in the beginning but now they know more, " says one private equity executive.

The amount of capital available to private equity funds runs into thousands of billions once leverage is included.

However, for the big private-equity firms like KKR, the greatest opportunity may come in diversifying.

And now it is to be rescued from the glare of public ownership by a group of private-equity firms and banks.

He now is part of a group hired by Lehman's restructuring advisers to manage the firm's real-estate private-equity arm.

A small number of private-equity groups consistently earn above-average returns, whereas the rest do far less well.

Mr Li also said SMG's internet television unit was in negotiations for a first round of private equity financing in the near future.

Private-equity groups around the world are raising vast funds, and companies are increasing their levels of borrowing.

Most of the reputable private equity firms are not in it for the very short term.

This year, a Private Equity and Strategic Mergers & Acquisitions Sub Working Group was established within the Banking Working Group.

Analysts say that many dealmakers are considering quitting their roles to set up Chinese private equity firms.

Private-equity firms maintain they bought defensive firms which are being run better than quoted peers are.

In the short term, private-equity firms, on the prowl for buying opportunities, may be willing to bet against the pack.

As with private-equity groups and hedge funds, the anxieties owe less to reality than to a mix of secrecy and suspicion.

A second limit on the private-equity recovery is the cockroach-like survival of the region's big and inefficient conglomerates.

Pure domestic funds also have the potential to launch takeovers, while foreign private equity deals are usually limited to minority stakes.

For private-equity funds, register, the investment subject and withdrawal mechanism, regulation legislation monitoring etc more necessary.

"The number is growing, but it's coming from a very low base, " says David Brown, a PwC partner covering greater China private equity.

Venture capital is viewed as a creative industry, while the world considers private equity as finance, money men who do not create.