Friday Letter: A message from Monaco

Many private equity people are in a rather festive mood these days. And so it was at EVCA’s Annual Symposium in Monaco this week, where more than 600 delegates took the opportunity to celebrate the European industry’s most successful year on record. Such was the crowd’s buoyancy at the conference that a novice to private equity might have been wondering whether this kind of investment activity is somehow immune to the kind of market cyclicality that so obviously affects all other asset classes.