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Outrageous Predictions 2023

Originally published on Forbes.com - By Antoine Drean, Triago Chairman & Founder - Since they’re outrageous, each of these predictions should be taken with a very large grain of salt (some bigger than others). Their primary goal is to amuse. And yet, perhaps outrageously, I’d wager that some will come to pass…

The Triago Review & Outlook – Winter 2022-2023

To paraphrase Mark Twain, PE’s travails are greatly exaggerated. PE performance is registering a gain, while Triago’s estimates for fundraising and PE-backed purchases indicate a banner year.

Outrageous Predictions 2022

By Triago Chairman, Antoine Drean - Originally published on Forbes.com - As in past years, these flights of fancy are grounded in reality. Positive or negative - some a bit more extreme than others - they may in turn become reality, but they're principally designed to entertain.
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Thoughts from our roundtable contributors

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."
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."
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."
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."
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."
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."
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."
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."
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."
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."
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."
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."
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."
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."
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."
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."
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."
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."
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."
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."
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."
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."
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."
Cristina Alcaide
Senior Vice President,  
Pinebridge Investments
"We 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."
Peter Lawrence
Founding Partner,  
Flag Capital Management
"Good GPs in venture capital are optimists, and good GPs in buyouts are cynics."
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."
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."
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."
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."
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."
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."
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."
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."
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."
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."
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."
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."
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."
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."
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."
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."
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."
Nick Wollak
Founder & Managing Partner,  
Axxon Group
"In many Latin American countries you’ll find truly exciting PE investments cropping up independently of macroeconomics."
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."
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."
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."
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."
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."
Thomas W. Keesee
Partner,  
Bozano Investimentos
"Private equity is one of the few viable alternatives for companies seeking growth capital in Latin America."
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."
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."
David Atterbury
Managing Director,  
Harbourvest Partners
"Growing numbers of LPs are recognizing the virtues of secondary market restructurings."
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."
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."
David Turner
Guardian Life Insurance Company of America,  
Head of Private Equity
"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."
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."
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."
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."
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media & News

Saleh Al-Ateeqi – Former London Head of KIA Sovereign Wealth Fund Joins Advisory Board 

Advisory Board members are leading lights of private equity and provide Triago executives and clients with strategic & tactical counsel across all business areas and geographies.

Fundless Sponsor Georgia Oak – Advised by Triago – Completes GP-Led Private Equity Secondary Deal for Sailfish Boats

Selling investors earned a significant return on their investment, with many, including Georgia Oak, rolling stakes into a continuation vehicle. Similar secondary market deals are expected.

Triago Creates EMEA Primary Directs Team; Hires Julian Becker to Source PE Commitments & Capital Raising Mandates in DACH Markets

The directs team will broaden the business beyond its booming U.S. core, while Becker is focusing exclusively on enhancing Triago’s strong DACH operations.

Triago Hires Partner to Launch Inaugural West Coast Office

Pete Purcell, the head of the San Diego office, is one of three new hires in an ongoing expansion that has seen staff rise 33 percent since 2021.
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