(Charlotte, NC – October 30, 2018)
Assets Under Management (AUM)
Source: Preqin, @WSJ, @MoHossain, @PaulJDavies
What We’re Reading
Below are links to recent articles we found interesting (no partnerships expressed or implied).
Risky Deals Return to Leveraged-Buyout Market
(The Wall Street Journal) Four years after a government crackdown on the leveraged-buyout market, risky loans are making a comeback. Few seem worried about it. Nearly 13% of LBOs in the first nine months of this year were financed with debt equal to at least seven times the target company’s EBITDA. This is more than double last year’s level and on track to be the highest since 2014.
An Unlikely Group Of Billionaires And Politicians Has Created The Most Unbelievable Tax Break Ever
(Forbes) Tech billionaire Sean Parker has joined forces with conservatives, liberals, capitalists, and philanthropists to create one of the greatest tax avoidance opportunities in American history, in the service of underperforming American cities and neighborhoods. If everything goes right, a big slice of the estimated $6.1 trillion of paper profits could go to revitalizing depressed communities. The broader legislation, called the Investing In Opportunity Act, was part of Donald Trump’s tax reform package. “Peter Theil bet me a million dollars that I wouldn’t get it done,” Sean Parker told Forbes. “So that was part of my motivation.”
Too Much Money Is a Worry for Direct Lenders
(The Wall Street Journal) Private debt funds for smaller companies are raising or waiting to invest as much as they’ve ever invested.
Thousands of Southerners Planted Trees for Retirement. It Didn’t Work.
(The Wall Street Journal) In the 1980s, the Conservation Reserve Program offered Southern farmers annual payments for each acre they planted with trees or grass. Many took the offer. Now, there are far more ready-to-cut trees than the region’s mills can saw or pulp. The surfeit has crushed timber prices in many Southern states.
EY Capital Confidence Barometer
(Ernst & Young) 41% of the respondents to the EY survey said the main M&A theme of the next 12 months would be “an increase in private equity as a major acquirer of assets.” The second-place answer was “an increase in cross-sector M&A driven by technology and digital.”