Cash flow positive Download PitchBook’s Report here. Net cash flows have been hugely positive for private debt funds recently. PitchBook’s Global Private Debt Report showed a record $24.6 billion funneled back to LPs in 2018, alongside a strong start to 2019 numbers as the data slowly rolls in. Private debt treaded water in terms of net

Is there “too much” private debt floating around? Maybe not The boom in direct debt lending has directly coincided with the PE boom over the last decade. No surprise there—a decade ago was the global financial crisis and its aftermath, when traditional lines of credit from Wall Street suddenly dried up. Direct lenders, with fewer

What is a private capital fund worth? Download PitchBook’s Report here. Valuing PE management companies can be extremely difficult, but the rise of GP stakes investing is making the task more common. In recent years, many GPs have been valued predominantly on cash flows, management fees and accrued performance fees....

PE hold times keep falling Download PitchBook’s Report here. Now down to 4.9 years, the median holding time of PE assets continues to fall. That’s the first sub-5 year reading since 2011, a timeframe that saw a peak of 6.2 years back in 2014, according to PitchBook’s latest Breakdown Report. Much of the overall downfall—a good

2020 prediction – SWFs and pensions will become more sophisticated Download PitchBook’s Report here. Sovereign wealth funds and public pensions financed private equity for years before they began co-investing in deals alongside their GPs. Though the trend is well publicized, the practice is still rare overall. Pension funds co-invest in about 2% of all US deals

2020 prediction – a dip in fundraising Download PitchBook’s Report here. 2019 fundraising levels hit record territory in the US, passing $300 billion for the first time. Year-end numbers show a decline in the number of fund closings, though, which fell to 202. Despite the capital haul, that’s the fewest US fund closings since 2012. Taken

2020 prediction – more VC-to-PE buyouts Download PitchBook’s Report here. Our 2020 Private Equity Outlook went out last week, and we’ll delve into some of our predictions as we roll into the new year. One trend we expect to see more of is VC-to-PE buyouts. Though they’re often mentioned in the same sentence, venture capital and

Middle market firms rarely target the public market Download PitchBook’s Report here. Middle market investors aren’t known for prolific take-private activity, but the percentages are surprisingly low. For the past two years, middle-market take-privates have accounted for less than 2% of all middle market activity. 2% is pretty skimpy. Dating back to 2014, MM buyouts have

Grading our predictions, part 3 Download PitchBook’s Report here. The past couple weeks we’ve been covering some of the PE predictions we made last year. We’ll be doing a much deeper dive on our upcoming free webinar, co-hosted with ACG. Here’s the registration link, and mark your calendars for December 17th if you’d like to join.Yours

Grading our predictions, part 2 Download PitchBook’s Report here. Last week we previewed our upcoming webinar with ACG on how our 2019 private equity predictions panned out. This week’s rearview assessments is one of our misses—we thought private debt fundraising levels would rebound off of a slower 2018. Slow being relative, as it was still one