January 30, 2009
Posted by felix
Learning about alternative investments in London – Part 2
LSE AIC Flags
The second day of the conference did not start too well for me as I had to pull an all-nighter to finish a team project for my Venture Capital/Private Equity class. Since I did not want to go without any sleep, I closed my eyes for four hours and then headed over to the conference.
This was the second day of the private equity day of the conference and the LSE PE club had lined up some top speakers. Nevertheless, spirits were not higher than the day before. This makes sense if you take a look at some recent reports, such as “Get Ready for the Private Equity Shakeout” (pdf) by IESE‘s Heinrich Liechtenstein and BCG‘s Heino Meerkatt, in which the authors suggest that as many as 40% of global private equity firms might go out of business 
in the next couple years. Another report by publically listed private equity giant Candover explores the fact that the European PE transaction values have dropped by a whopping 59% compared to last year’s fourth quarter. I found the following sentence quite telling, given that Candover IS a large buy-out fund: “For the second time in the sample period and the first time since Q4 2007, no transactions were recorded at all in the largest value bracket, defined here as deals worth in excess of EUR 1.65bn.” One of the speakers at the LSE AIC summed up the overall sentiment quite well by telling his audience that “[...] right now it is about preserving value. If I return to my office after this speech and I find people being involved in sourcing transactions, I will fire them.”
Referring to my last post and my dresscode mishap, the following photo is a good example of how you should NOT dress at an alternative investments conference, when the dresscode is clearly stated as business standard.
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