It is an exciting, energising, daunting stage in the life of a tech firm. Attention from a Private Equity firm with an interest in either growth or buyout is validation of the vision, energy, leadership and passion a founder has poured into their business over years. PE firms typically don’t look for companies that need rescuing. They seek good businesses and strong management teams full of hardened professionals that know their market and are skilled and savvy leaders who have brought their teams along on their journey, buoyed by the promise of their vision for what the company can achieve.…

Short term pain for long term gain Over the last two decades, there has been a worldwide decline in the number of publicly listed companies, accompanied by a rapid growth in private organisations that exist unburdened by the reporting, compliance and complicated shareholder relationships that come with the territory of listed companies. According to Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance, the number of public firms in the US has approximately halved between 1997 and 2020, with the number of private equity backed firms in the US alone doubling between 2006 and 2017. The move away from the public company…

What to do first? – A risk based approach for post-acquisition transition. Due diligence is complete, negotiation is over and the deal is done. Another successful company acquisition with all of the hard work behind us, right? Well, it isn’t that straightforward. No matter how good the deal is on paper, the difficult work of either integrating the business into a larger parent, or implementing the changes needed to drive multiple expansion is only just beginning. The changes wrought by acquisition affect all parts of the newly formed business. There are processes and procedures to be harmonised, consolidation of corporate…

According to Forbes and Harvard Business Review, over 75% of company acquisitions fail to deliver the value that supported the business case to make the investment. That figure, while confronting, reflects the day-to-day experience of General Partners across the globe, and is born out in the return profile most PE funds. Overall, Private Equity and Venture Capital outperform the market, however not every portfolio investment achieves at expectation. There are two sides to that equation – for every portfolio investment that doesn’t meet expectation, other investments in the fund must overachieve to deliver overall fund performance A dollar lost in…