Private Equity Conference at the London Business School
I was at the 3rd annual Private Equity Conference at the School last Friday. It was a great event with more than 200 participants and keynote speakers from KKR and Warburg Pincus. There were more than 10 panels and I assisted to the two VC panels and one about the convergence between PE and Hedge Fund.
The main theme of the Conference was about Europe which was interesting given the "locust" comment made in Germany by the SDP chairman a few days before. All this anti-capitalism rhetoric did not bother Todd Fisher (KKR) who was really bullish for private equity firms. According to him, CEOs (yes even in Germany and France) are now more and more considering private equity funds as a viable alternative. Todd then acknowledged the threat from Hedge Funds but he believed they were facing the huge challenge of impacting the businesses that they owned and lacked the resources and capabilities to do so. Indeed, with the old financial skills being commoditized, the real challenge was to create value from the businesses, which requires operational skills more than financial ones. So advice to all private equity wanabees: the traditional Investment Banking background is becoming less useful and major PE houses are now looking for real operational experience (ie: CEO level of big businesses).
The first VC panel talked briefly about the AIM London market now viewed as the European NASDAQ which would be great because the lack of exit opportunities is really hurting the VC industry in Europe. All the panellists agreed that there was no shortage of people with ideas in Europe but most entrepreneurs here lacked marketing skills (ie: understand the market dynamics). European entrepreneurs were also viewed as "lazy" because after a successful venture, few of them went on to create a new one whereas it is not the case in the US.
I won't describe here all the panels to which I went but it was clearly a great conference and I'm looking forward to the 4th event. Interestingly, the MBA office has just announced today that you could now have a concentration in Private Equity which is something I'm probably going to consider seriously.
The main theme of the Conference was about Europe which was interesting given the "locust" comment made in Germany by the SDP chairman a few days before. All this anti-capitalism rhetoric did not bother Todd Fisher (KKR) who was really bullish for private equity firms. According to him, CEOs (yes even in Germany and France) are now more and more considering private equity funds as a viable alternative. Todd then acknowledged the threat from Hedge Funds but he believed they were facing the huge challenge of impacting the businesses that they owned and lacked the resources and capabilities to do so. Indeed, with the old financial skills being commoditized, the real challenge was to create value from the businesses, which requires operational skills more than financial ones. So advice to all private equity wanabees: the traditional Investment Banking background is becoming less useful and major PE houses are now looking for real operational experience (ie: CEO level of big businesses).
The first VC panel talked briefly about the AIM London market now viewed as the European NASDAQ which would be great because the lack of exit opportunities is really hurting the VC industry in Europe. All the panellists agreed that there was no shortage of people with ideas in Europe but most entrepreneurs here lacked marketing skills (ie: understand the market dynamics). European entrepreneurs were also viewed as "lazy" because after a successful venture, few of them went on to create a new one whereas it is not the case in the US.
I won't describe here all the panels to which I went but it was clearly a great conference and I'm looking forward to the 4th event. Interestingly, the MBA office has just announced today that you could now have a concentration in Private Equity which is something I'm probably going to consider seriously.
posted by k at 10:40 PM
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