As master of ceremonies at last week’s Greenwich Economic Forum, your correspondent had a ring-side seat at the event’s sixth annual gathering at the Delamar Hotel in Greenwich, CT. The list of speakers read like a Who’s Who of Nobel-prize winning thought-leaders in business, economics, and investments. It was hard not to be overwhelmed by […]
At a recent private markets conference in Paris, Blackstone’s CEO Stephen Schwarzman said private equity “has just been too successful. Institutions have made so much money that all of a sudden they’ve exceeded their expected exposure.” As a result, cash-constrained investors are looking to the secondary market to sell some of their exposure. But has […]
Last week in our special series on private equity secondaries, we discussed how GPs are leveraging newly developed liquidity in that market to manage funds and assist their LPs with their specialized investment needs. Given today’s challenged capital markets it’s also tougher to extract expected values from your best properties. Sponsors are looking inwards and […]
Last week in our special series on private equity secondaries, we discussed how GPs are leveraging newly developed liquidity in that market to manage funds and assist their LPs with their specialized investment needs. Given today’s challenged capital markets it’s also tougher to extract expected values from your best properties. Sponsors are looking inwards and […]
Our head of secondaries, Nick Lawler, relates the following story: “In April 2019, I was in the middle of a road-trip from Chicago to Louisville, when I got a call from one of our relationships at a major investment bank to discuss a new deal. The sponsor, one of the nation’s largest and most respected, […]
Besides the above survey, an article last month in Secondaries Investor cited Jefferies data showing 80% of LPs sought liquidity by selling into continuation vehicles. This is an extraordinary shift from investors getting realizations the old-fashioned way, i.e. private equity owners selling businesses to new strategic or sponsor buyers. Of course, current market conditions are […]
A recent Financial Time piece on bonds reminded us of their long, proud history as well as their critical importance to the proper functioning of today’s global markets. The article points out that while banks have faded in importance as holders of capital, bonds – led by US Treasury’s – are major components of the […]
Our last Market Now series came in March 2022 after Covid had peaked and begun to fade, when Russia invaded Ukraine. This week we think another pause to review conditions is appropriate given a number of dynamics at play. First, the Fed has paused in its rate hikes as their gravity seems to have pulled […]
In early 2020, just before Covid came crashing down on our heads, we were in the middle of a Lead Left series called “Ten Top Myths About Private Credit”. Myth #5, published on February 20, was “No one uses mezzanine debt anymore.” We felt compelled, after a decade of increasingly aggressive senior and unitranche financings, […]
This space has covered at length the investor-friendly changes in senior debt terms since the Fed began its rate hiking regime in March 2022. We recently spent time speaking with junior capital providers about the state of mezz terms today… ▶︎ Read July 24 2023 newsletter: here ▶︎ Chart of the Week: here (by Refinitiv) […]