Contributors

Triago regularly hosts roundtables where leading LPs and GPs discuss private equity trends and issues. Here are highlights.

Portrait of Abhik Das

Abhik Das

Managing Director
Golding Capital Partners

“It’s the collective responsibility of limited partners to push back against subscription lines. Specifically, LP advisory boards need to voice discontent.”

Portrait of Alastair Gibbons

Alastair Gibbons

Senior Partner
Bridgepoint Capital

“Macro-economic issues and market volatility should not impact a good general partner’s ability to produce superior long-term returns.”

Portrait of Alistair Watson

Alistair Watson

Senior Investment Manager
Aberdeen Asset Management

“Acquisitions of smaller managers can be an attractive way for big managers to get access to sought after sector expertise.”

Portrait of Alykhan Natoo

Alykhan Natoo

Partner
Helios Investment Partners

“The majority of attractive investments in Sub-Saharan Africa – for us and others - concern the building of basic businesses that should exist but that simply don’t.”

Portrait of Andrea Auerbach

Andrea Auerbach

Managing Director
Cambridge Associates

“We estimate that subscription lines repaid after six months or more, boost fund returns on average by 200 basis points annually. That can artificially push managers into a higher performance quartile.”

Portrait of Arnaud De Cremiers

Arnaud De Cremiers

Partner
Adams Street Partners

“In private equity, investing in a new geography is a way to protect your returns by diversifying them. You should not be trying to boost returns in exchange for greater risk.”

Portrait of Ben Griffiths

Ben Griffiths

Managing Director
Mufg Investor Services

“Some 80 percent to 90 percent of our closed-end fund clients now look at setting up subscription lines versus less than 50 percent five years ago.”

Portrait of Bon French

Bon French

Chairman Board of Directors
Adams Street Partners

“You can’t tell when the cycle will turn, so the most effective defense against high prices for a sophisticated private equity investor is dollar cost averaging, year in, year out.”

Portrait of Charlie Ayres

Charlie Ayres

Chairman
Trilantic Capital Partners

“One useful priority could be lowering the hurdle rate significantly. That could keep GPs and LPs better aligned in what is likely to be a relatively low-return environment going forward.”

Portrait of Christophe Evain

Christophe Evain

CEO
Intermediate Capital Group

“The benefits of scale usually come by branching into new areas or specialties and using the same platform for fundraising, compliance and reporting.”

Portrait of Christopher Kojima

Christopher Kojima

Global Head of the Alternative Investments & Manager Selection Group
Goldman Sachs

“Organizational stability and generational transition were always risks that the industry needed to address, but the 2008 financial crisis amplified this.”

Portrait of Chuck Flynn

Chuck Flynn

Managing Director
Bregal Private Equity Partners

“It might make sense to follow an index strategy in asset classes where the difference between the best and the worst is small, but spending time and money to weight your portfolio towards exceptional managers will always be the surest way to achieve optimum returns in private equity.”

Portrait of Colin Blaydon

Colin Blaydon

Professor of Management and Director of the Center for Private Equity and Entrepreneurship
Tuck School Of Business At Dartmouth

“Another big challenge today is communications. At the best-run firms, the once generally accepted ad-hoc approach to investor relations has morphed into a formal, broad public relations function.”

Portrait of Conni Jonsson

Conni Jonsson

Managing Partner & Chairman of the Board
Eqt Partners

“Unorthodox PE structures often mean GPs sell services too cheaply to build sustainable businesses, or to deliver returns that satisfy investors.”

Portrait of Cristina Alcaide

Cristina Alcaide

Senior Vice President
Pinebridge Investments

“Pinebridge InvestmentsWe all know that basic guideline for real estate investment - "location, location, location." Well, in Latin American private equity there’s also an overarching guideline for both LPs and GPs - ‘selection, selection, selection.”

Portrait of David Atterbury

David Atterbury

Managing Director
Harbourvest Partners

“Growing numbers of LPs are recognizing the virtues of secondary market restructurings.”

Portrait of David Belmont

David Belmont

Chief Risk Officer
Commonfund

“If you don’t seek out the best GPs, adding private equity to your overall portfolio is not going to improve your risk/return profile.”

Portrait of David Jeffrey

David Jeffrey

Partner, Head of Europe
Stepstone Group

“It strikes me as reasonable for retail investors to have the opportunity to access private equity, since it has substantially outperformed almost every other asset class.”

Portrait of David Turner

David Turner

Head of Private Equity
Guardian Life Insurance Company of America

“As an LP, we don’t try to adjust the risk profile of our existing private equity portfolio because GPs and portfolio company managements already do that.”

Portrait of Derek Sulger

Derek Sulger

Partner & Founder
Lunar Capital

“We tell our investors that as the second largest economy in the world, China today is just a small step away from being the biggest. Understanding the big picture helps bring home the depth of the opportunity set in China.”

Portrait of Deven Parekh

Deven Parekh

Managing Director
Insight Venture Partners

“One of the keys to investing success is only take stakes in start-ups in markets that really are as big as the entrepreneurs’ vision. That keeps business plans and investment burn rates in line with the opportunity.”

Portrait of Ernest Lambers

Ernest Lambers

Co-Founder and CIO
Emalternatives

“There are some [frontier market] economies that are interesting, where you don’t see a lot of private equity activity. To justify more investment, there must first be more good GPs operating in these markets.”

Portrait of Francesca Cornelli

Francesca Cornelli

Chair of the Finance Faculty and Academic Director of the Coller Institute of Private Equity
London Business School

“Private equity performance in emerging markets is more negatively impacted by macro crisis than it is in developed markets.”

Portrait of Fred Destin

Fred Destin

Partner
Accel Partners

“Globally, one of the most interesting developments of recent years is the collapse of European barriers to successful venture capital investing. Europe offers the prospect of 3x returns for fund investors for the first time.”

Portrait of Gaël Le Clec'h

Gaël Le Clec’h

Head Of Private Equity
Cnp Assurances

“Unfortunately, subscription line loans are now mostly used for the purpose of inflating annualized rates of return.”

Portrait of Gary Little

Gary Little

Co-Founder & Partner
Canvas Venture Fund

“Although the investment flow to Silicon Valley is higher by several orders of magnitude than flows going to other regions, the average returns in the Valley have been the greatest. In almost every conceivable new category pioneered in recent decades, the global leaders have emerged in Silicon Valley.”

Portrait of Helen Steers

Helen Steers

Partner
Pantheon Ventures

“With the suffering caused by Covid-19, PE’s commitment to social impact is coming into greater focus, leading to far-reaching measures to improve the wellbeing of portfolio company employees, and the communities in which companies operate.”

Portrait of Ingmar Vallano

Ingmar Vallano

Managing Director
Ardian

“Limited partners accept the notion that to hit expected return multiples the biggest private equity funds will take more time to sell assets than in the past.”

Portrait of Jagdeep Singh Bachher

Jagdeep Singh Bachher

CIO
Regents of the University of California

“In a period when interest rates are low and returns from stocks are not likely to meet our requirements, we institutional investors must take a good amount of the blame for pushing GPs to manufacture scenarios that generate the high returns we need. Everyone should be lowering their expectations.”

Portrait of Jan Faber

Jan Faber

Managing Director
Bregal Investments

“We’ve learned that the best protection against losses, particularly in difficult markets, is making sure a GP has enough of his own capital invested in his fund so that a loss hurts.”

Portrait of Jean Eric Salata

Jean Eric Salata

Founding Partner & CEO
Baring Private Equity Asia

“A good investment all boils down to the price you pay, whether you are talking about fast or slow growing economies.”

Portrait of Jim Strang

Jim Strang

Chairman of EMEA
Hamilton Lane

“The covenant-lite leverage that accounts for the vast majority of credit now, gives companies and their private equity managers greater flexibility to deal effectively with challenges.”

Portrait of Jonathan Jia Zhu

Jonathan Jia Zhu

Managing Director
Bain Capital

“If you apply common sense it’s hard to imagine a scenario where the risks of investing in China outweigh the promise.”

Portrait of Juan Delgado Moreira

Juan Delgado Moreira

Managing Director
Hamilton Lane

“Across all emerging markets we want exposure to burgeoning consumer demand – this is the core appeal of developing economies.”

Portrait of Kathryn Leaf Wilmes

Kathryn Leaf Wilmes

Head of Global Infrastructure
Pantheon Ventures

“With infrastructure, you can safely enhance returns with the same leverage levels as in traditional buyouts or, in some cases, with even more leverage.”

Portrait of Klaus Bjørn Rühne

Klaus Bjørn Rühne

Partner
Atp Private Equity Partners

“By placing a discount or premium on assets, secondary market investors already give you an independent assessment of the accuracy of GP valuations.”

Portrait of Mark Barnard

Mark Barnard

Managing Director
Howard Hughes Medical Institute

“Not all real assets always work as an inflation hedge, so that shouldn’t be a principle reason why investors buy them.”

Portrait of Marlon Chigwende

Marlon Chigwende

Managing Director and Co-Head of Sub-Saharan Africa
Carlyle Group

“Investments in Sub-Saharan Africa may make a better return than Asian investments, but investors need greater expertise, more local understanding and a bigger dollop of patience than what was required in Asia.”

Portrait of Matt Jones

Matt Jones

Partner
Pantheon Ventures

“In a single-asset secondary deal, if the GP takes the majority of their capital off the table that’s a deal breaker for us.”

Portrait of Michael Hacker

Michael Hacker

Managing Director
Alpinvest Partners

“As a secondary buyer moves from diversified portfolios of private fund interests with hundreds of underlying assets, to GP-led transactions involving multiple portfolio companies and on to single-asset secondaries, the motivation is the promise of progressively higher returns.”

Portrait of Michael Lindauer

Michael Lindauer

Co-Head of Fund Investments
Allianz Capital Partners

“In such a complicated investment class, you should be devoting years to getting to know managers before you invest with them.”

Portrait of Michael Studer

Michael Studer

Head of Portfolio & Risk Management
Partners Group

“There’s a degree of irony in reducing the relative importance of judgment to a percentage, but I’d say seventy percent of your final decision is based on qualitative judgments and only thirty percent on numbers you can crunch.”

Portrait of Nick Wollak

Nick Wollak

Founder & Managing Partner
Axxon Group

“In many Latin American countries you’ll find truly exciting PE investments cropping up independently of macroeconomics.”

Portrait of Peter Lawrence

Peter Lawrence

Founding Partner
Flag Capital Management

“Good GPs in venture capital are optimists, and good GPs in buyouts are cynics.”

Portrait of Philipp Schnyder

Philipp Schnyder

Managing Director
Co-Head of Private Equity Secondaries, Partners Group

“Performance has almost nothing to do with the discount or premium paid relative to declared net asset value, though performance does correlate strongly with buyer ability to conduct analysis and forecast the value creation potential of all investments.”

Portrait of Philippe Franchet

Philippe Franchet

Senior Partner
L Capital Management

“Combining L Capital’s Asian and European operations with Catterton’s network in North America and South America, gives us the kind of global offering that will maximize returns.”

Portrait of Rainer Ender

Rainer Ender

Head of Private Equity
Schroder Adveq

“Covid-19 has prolonged a period of easy credit. One of the biggest challenges resulting from that for private equity managers and their investors is continued asset price inflation and, most likely, even higher purchase price multiples.”

Portrait of Richard Howell

Richard Howell

Partner
Pai Partners

“Single-asset secondaries can be the most attractive way to raise capital when you need to reconcile seemingly contradictory investor priorities for assets that have been held a long time.”

Portrait of Ross Bhappu

Ross Bhappu

Senior Partner
Resource Capital Funds

“When you acquire mining assets it often takes years to develop cash-flow and profit. we couldn’t invest in mines with consistent success without private equity strategy.”

Portrait of Simon Murray

Simon Murray

Founder and Executive Chairman
Gems

“If you look at the relative promise of developed markets versus emerging markets, the latter are on every level where I want to be going forward.”

Portrait of Steve Kaplan

Steve Kaplan

Neubauer Professor
The University Of Chicago Booth School Of Business

“If large funds start to materially underperform smaller funds, you’ll see a halt to growing fund sizes.”

Portrait of Steve Pagliuca

Steve Pagliuca

Managing Director
Bain Capital

“It’s counterintuitive, but covenant-lite loans have positively impacted fund performance and the ability of challenged private equity-backed companies to bounce back.”

Portrait of Thomas W. Keesee

Thomas W. Keesee

Partner
Bozano Investimentos

“Private equity is one of the few viable alternatives for companies seeking growth capital in Latin America.”

Portrait of Tom Keck

Tom Keck

Chief Investment Officer
Stepstone Group

“LPs looking to do co-investments must be able to identify the transactions where the GP has a real edge.”

Portrait of Tom Kerr

Tom Kerr

Managing Director
Hamilton Lane

“The way to successfully deal with the different economics of buyer, seller and manager in a secondary market restructuring is through total transparency regarding everyone’s aims.”

Portrait of Vincent Gombault

Vincent Gombault

Managing Director
Axa Private Equity

“An average annual return of slightly more than 10 percent on secondaries is realistic in this new world.”

Portrait of Wouter Moerel

Wouter Moerel

Managing Director
Alpinvest Partners

“For a secondary market fund restructuring to be attractive, uninvested capital, or fresh commitments, must be sufficient for add-ons and new investments.”

Portrait of Yar-Ping Soo

Yar-Ping Soo

Partner
Adams Street Partners

“Scale can’t be underestimated when it comes to China’s appeal, in particular in relation to the country’s venture capital market.”