September 2003 Issue

Rudolph Giuliani is a busy man, but one area in particular has captured his attention since leaving his post as mayor of New York City - the private investment market. Giuliani's consulting firm, Giuliani Partners LLC, recently announced a partnership with New York-based Bear Stearns Merchant Banking to invest in cash-flow positive companies that provide products and services related to security and public safety ? a sector in which Giuliani and his mayoral staff took a keen interest. Rick Perkal, a senior managing director at Bear Stearn's $2bn private equity arm, directly oversees the firm's security investment program. He spoke with us recently about the business of providing safety, as well as the dynamics of working with, as his friends call him, Rudy.

Firm Cimino & Associati Private Equity Sectoral Focus Small and mid-market buyouts Fund Type Private equity Amount Raised N/A Status Launched Amount Targeted €110m Geographical Focus North and North East of Italy Investors Natexis Private Equity International (Milan, Padua and Bologna) Advisors Acanthus Advisers (P) Firm Cabot Square Capital Amount Raised €284m Fund Type Private […]

PizzaExpress, Fitness First, Debenhams - a number of recent public-to-private transactions in the UK have attracted controversy. Institutional shareholders challenged underlying valuations and wondered whose side company management involved in pending take-privates were really on. Ted Wilson reflects on a summer of heated debate.

George Anson knows European private equity and European private equity likes to think it knows him. As someone who is presently helping invest some $2.8bn outside the US, certainly many GPs want to know him. And many pension fund managers likewise see a fair bit of him. David Hawkins talks to this man from HarbourVest Partners, the biggest edicated private equity fund of funds manager in the world.

The European high yield market has struggled to gain significant momentum in the past few years, with investors and issuers alike finding reasons not to embrace the product wholeheartedly. However, a new offering pioneered in July by UK DIY chain Focus Wickes, so-called mezzanine notes, seems to have addressed many of those reasons to say no. So what are these notes, and how do they work? Deal Mechanic investigates.

Few limited partners in today's far more volatile investment environment are not pondering what their private equity investments are worth. The challenge is to arrive at meaningful valuation. Here, Erik Hirsch, the Chief Investment Officer at Hamilton Lane, which has valued over 750 private equity partnerships for itself and its clients, offers some advice.*

Roland Berger has been a key figure in German business ever since setting up his eponymous strategy consultancy in the 1960s. Here he talks to Private Equity International about the structural weaknesses of Germany's economy that are generating the private equity investment opportunities of the future

More than enough has been written about the broken promise that was Germany's private equity market. The problem is: who made that promise? Not the local practitioners who continue to build out the franchise of the asset class not so much in spite, but because, of the tough times the economy is experiencing. Philip Borel visited Germany to find out who's doing what and why.

The buying and selling of private equity partnerships on the secondary market is a well established activity. But many corporations are seeking liquidity from portfolios of direct investments - relics of an era in which everyone aspired to be a venture capitalist. In addition, some GPs are eager to sell off portfolios of older investments that they no longer have the resources or desire to nurture. Simon Sheppard explores the burst of activity in the secondary market for direct investments.

Everyone, it seems, is a secondaries player these days. A field once populated by a handful of specialist firms is now crowded with relative newcomers who want to do secondary deals for profit, for access, or as a new product line. The veterans are focused on large, mature portfolios, while the newcomers gravitate toward ‘widows and orphans’. Which group has an edge? Simon Sheppard, David Snow and Philip Borel report

So much to say about secondaries Staff 2003-09-01 Writer Much of the material in this issue, our biggest ever, deals with the place where most private equity investors go when they want liquidity: the secondary market.Those interested in the subject - can anyone not be i