美国银行“被瘦身”

随着新的关于另类资产监管条款的出台,面对严苛的政策法规,美国各个银行不得不开始新一轮的"瘦身"潮。     

Venture capital funds and the public equity market

This paper considers the relationship between the public equity market and the returns to venture investing using a dataset which is derived from the records of two large limited partners who have been investing in venture capital for almost 30 years. Evidence is found to suggest that market conditions over the investment cycle, and exit conditions at the time of exit in particular, are an important determinant. This paper also investigates whether any other aspects of the venture investment process respond to events in the broader market. While general trends are evident in the venture investment cycle, only the intensity of the investment process is found to respond to events in the public equity market.     

Sovereign Wealth Funds: A Growing Global Force in Corporate Finance

Sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) have emerged as among the most important players in global financial markets. With an estimated $3 trillion at present, the collective assets at their disposal are expected to reach or surpass $7.5 trillion by 2012. SWFs have shown a wide range of investment objectives, along with continually evolving time horizons and risk appetites. For example, some SWFs have become increasingly active in corporate acquisitions and other strategic transactions. Though many of these funds prefer to invest in debt or non‐controlling equity positions, a small but growing number are seeking substantial minority and controlling equity stakes. SWFs have also recently become major participants in the financial institutions and alternative investment industries, with several high profile investments in well‐known private equity firms and financial services companies. In certain corporate transactions, their longer time horizons and willingness to employ larger percentages of equity have made them attractive alternatives to established private equity. At the same time, however, the rising prominence and perceived lack of transparency of SWFs have raised concerns among governments and other market participants in countries where companies have been targeted for investment. For this reason, companies intent on obtaining funding from or investing with SWFs are advised to prepare for media and regulatory scrutiny, particularly if a transaction is perceived to involve a country's strategic or security interests. Government policymakers are urged to balance the perceived threats of SWFs against their potential benefits, particularly their ability to provide a stabilizing source of global liquidity in the current economic environment.     

Estimating Private Equity Returns from Limited Partner Cash Flows

We introduce a methodology to estimate the historical time series of returns to investment in private equity funds. The approach requires only an unbalanced panel of cash contributions and distributions accruing to limited partners and is robust to sparse data. We decompose private equity returns from 1994 to 2015 into a component due to traded factors and a time‐varying private equity premium not spanned by publicly traded factors. We find cyclicality in private equity returns that differs according to fund type and is consistent with the conjecture that capital market segmentation contributes to private equity returns.     

Columbia Law School Roundtable on Public Aspects of Private Equity

The mandate of the broader private equity “ecosystem” goes well beyond earning competitive returns for the limited partners and their beneficiaries. After noting that PE investing is encountering ever larger “headline” and social risks, the panelists were in complete agreement that LPs should exert greater pressure on PE sponsors to take account of and try to address negative externalities when buying and operating their portfolio companies. Bain Capital's Double Impact Fund, for example, while always looking for ways of increasing profits and reducing risk, sets out to have a positive influence on its non‐investor stakeholders, including employees. To that end, Bain develops and tracks company‐specific metrics linked to positive outcomes, and then links those metrics to management compensation. And the director of ESG programs at the International Limited Partners Association points to ILPA's programs for diversity and inclusion as a promising model.     

对我国风险投资组织模式选择的研究

有限合伙制以其特有的产权和责任安排而被认为是最符合风险投资行业特点和要求的组织形式。我国在对建立有限合伙制风险投资企业的认识上存在一定的分歧，本认为随着我国经济的不断向前发展，相关法律法规的完善，有限合伙制必然会成为我国风险投资企业组织模式的首选。     

University of Texas Roundtable on The State of the U.S. Private Equity Market

In this discussion that took place at the 2017 University of Texas Private Equity conference, the moderator began by noting that since 2000, the fraction of the U.S. GDP produced by companies that are owned or controlled by global private equity firms has increased from 7% to 15%. What's more, today's PE firms have raised an estimated $1.5 trillion of capital that is now available for investing. And thanks in part to this abundance of capital, the prices of PE transactions have increased sharply, with EBITDA pricing multiples rising from about 8.8X in 2012 to 11.5X at the beginning of 2017. Partly as a consequence of such abundant capital and high transaction prices, the aggregate returns to U.S. private equity funds during this four‐year period have fallen below the returns to the stockholders of U.S. public companies. Nevertheless, the good news for private equity investors is that the best‐performing PE firms have continued their long history of outperforming the market. And the consistency of their performance goes a long way toward explaining why the overwhelming majority of the capital contributed by limited partners continues to be allocated to funds put together by these top‐tier PE firms. In this roundtable, a representative of one of these top‐tier firms joins the founder of a relatively new firm with a middle‐market focus in discussing the core competencies and approaches that have enabled the best PE firms to increase the productivity and value of their portfolio companies. Effective financial management—the ability to manage leveraged capital structures and the process of readying their companies for sale to potential strategic or financial investors—is clearly part of the story. But more fundamental and critical to their success has been their ability to find undervalued or undermanaged assets—and either retain or recruit operating managements that, when effectively monitored and motivated, are able to realize the potential value of those assets through changes in strategy and increases in operating efficiency.     

The Evolution of Private Equity in Emerging Markets: The Case of Poland

In the last ten years, there has been a pronounced shift toward emerging markets in institutional investor allocations of capital to private equity. While the lion's share of the allocations to emerging markets have gone to the “BRIC” nations, lesser‐known markets like Poland are threatening to steal the spotlight. Economic stabilization, development of the private sector, a favorable business outlook, and continuous improvement of the local institutional infrastructure (laws, accounting rules, and fiscal regimes) have all contributed to the development of a vibrant private equity industry in Poland. Most private equity firms in Poland structure their deals around five broad investment themes: technology; media; and telecommunications; manufacturing; consumer services; business services; and financial services. Local private equity firms have traditionally adopted two different strategies towards these sectors. The first group of private equity firms initially targeted manufacturing, with the conviction that, as the Polish economy developed, the satisfaction of consumer needs for basic products would be the largest source of market demand. The second group assumed that the market would require access to more services to accommodate the growing local economy. Both approaches have proved reasonably successful, as the leaders among these two groups of firms have continued to succeed in raising new funds while achieving high returns for their limited partners. And while the accomplishments of the private equity industry have been made possible by the extent of Poland's transformation from a socialist into a market economy, the industry itself continues to play an important role in this transformation by providing both outside capital and know‐how for local firms and managers.     

一元店跑赢经济危机

打折店和一元店是日常生活中必不可少的商业组成部分,可最近几个月来,爱上它们的不仅是那些讲求实惠的家庭主妇们,投资者们也纷纷对它们动了心。     

TOWARD A GLOBAL MODEL OF VENTURE CAPITAL?

While the U.S. still accounts for about two‐thirds of the world's total private equity fund‐raising and investment, other countries have been adopting American practices and are experiencing significant growth in their private equity markets. In fact, a case can be made that a global market for venture capital and private equity is emerging, at least in Western Europe and North America, where venture markets are seeing significant convergence in funding levels, investment patterns, and realized returns. To date, however, the European Union has had little success in establishing community‐wide commercial laws, taxation regimes, or corporate governance policies, so each country's private equity funds are organized in segmented national markets, and investment also tends to be largely localized. The Asian markets are even more fragmented: venture capital shows no sign of taking root in Japan, and China lacks the basic legal infrastructure needed to support a vibrant venture capital market. Venture capitalists create value through their role as active investors, and government and business leaders around the world have come to realize that venture capital and private equity investing can be a significant force in promoting economic development and technological progress. In general, countries with English common law codes offer greater protection to inves‐tors; the ratio of venture capital spending to GDP for common law countries is nearly double that in civil law countries. Government efforts to promote venture capital would probably be better focused on eliminating regulatory road‐blocks, lowering taxes, and provid‐ing a favorable investor climate. In the meantime, it appears that pri‐vate equity fund‐raising and invest‐ment have hit their cyclical lows and are poised to surpass $250 billion globally within three or four years and to reach one‐half trillion dollars by the end of the decade. The author also predicts that India, whose history as a former British colony has given it a common law framework as well as system of elite universities and technical institutes known for the quality of its gradu‐ates, should become one of the five leading venture capital markets by the end of this decade.     

Liquidity Risk and Venture Capital Finance

This article provides theory and evidence in support of the proposition that venture capitalists adjust their investment decisions according to liquidity conditions on IPO exit markets. We refer to technological risk as a choice variable in terms of the characteristics of the entrepreneurial firm in which the venture capitalist invests, and liquidity risk as the current and expected future external exit market conditions. We show that in times of expected illiquidity of exit markets (high liquidity risk), venture capitalists invest proportionately more in new high-tech and early-stage projects (high technology risk) in order to postpone exit requirements. When exit markets are liquid, venture capitalists rush to exit by investing more in later-stage projects. We further provide complementary evidence that shows that conditions of low liquidity risk give rise to less syndication. Our theory and supporting empirical results facilitate a unifying theme that links related research on illiquidity in private equity.     

私募股权投资基金研究——基于券商角度

次贷危机的爆发,使得诸多国际私募股权基金纷纷转战中国,挖掘中国市场价值。当前,中国已经成为全球私募股权基金的投资中心之一。从我国私募股权基金市场的格局来看,目前已经形成了多种组织模式并存、参与者逐渐扩大化的态势。与传统的靠天吃饭的盈利模式不同,券商开展直投业务不仅有利于自身赢利空间的拓展,而且有利于发挥地域优势,针对中小企业的需求提供特色服务,其自身也具备一定的优势。本文沿袭这条思路,重点对我国券商参与直投业务的相关规定、券商开展直投业务的现状及其问题进行了讨论。     

江苏省民间资本进入金融领域的现状及风险研究

国务院出台了＂新老36条＂,鼓励和规范民间资本进入金融业等投资领域,这不仅有利于民间资本投资渠道多元化,有利于缓解弱势群体融资难题也有利于金融改革与创新,促进金融业的繁荣发展。然而,随着民间资本进入金融领域,金融业竞争将异常激烈,如何应对民间资本进入金融领域后出现的风险以及采取相应的防范措施,对于规范民间资本投资,提高民间资本的投资效率乃至促进整个国民经济的健康发展都具有重要意义。论文着重对江苏民间资本进行分析,拟从江苏省民间资本进入金融领域现状分析,分析江苏民间资本进入金融服务领域的风险因素,并提出江苏民间资本进入金融领域的风险对策。     

Determinants of Underwriting Fees by New Entrant Banks: Evidence from the Japanese IPO Underwriting Market

This research investigates how banks expand market share after entering the underwriting market by examining the relation between commercial bank equity investments and underwriting fees. First, we find that not only bank underwriters with private information about issuers but also those without private information discount their fees, especially for smaller and riskier firms. This result is robust when using multiple firm‐bank relationship measures or when changing the investing stage. This is consistent with the strategic discount view that predicts that bank underwriters discount fees to expand bank market shares in underwriting markets.     

Large scale analysis of Islamic equity funds using a meta-frontier approach with data envelopment analysis

The paper aims to analyze the efficiency of Islamic equity funds (IEF) during crisis and growth periods and across six investment regions. To our best knowledge, our study uses for the first time the meta-frontier approach with data envelopment analysis (DEA) to compare the relative efficiency of Islamic equity funds. The paper uses a large scale set of data with a sample of 301 IEF for the period of 1993–2013 which enables us to reach conclusions across different investment regions and across different periods which cannot be made with a small size set of data. The paper provides empirical evidence about the improvement of the efficiency levels between 2002 and 2007. It shows that the average efficiency scores during recession periods are higher than the corresponding scores during growth periods. The paper also reveals that the Asia Pacific and Middle East/Africa investment regions exhibit the best technology for IEF. While North America, Europe, Emerging Markets and funds investing worldwide operate with almost the same scores and remain below the average showing a technology gap from “the best practice” for IEF. For funds investing worldwide and in North America, the meta-technology ratio is steadily increasing since 2009, indicating an improvement in their technologies. Our results suggest that although Islamic funds do not seem to be impacted by the financial crisis, they do need to improve their efficiency since the levels are far below the frontier.     

Private equity and Covid-19

We survey more than 200 private equity (PE) managers from firms with $1.9 trillion of assets under management (AUM) about their portfolio performance, decision-making and activities during the Covid-19 pandemic. Given that PE managers have significant incentives to maximize value, their actions during the pandemic should indicate what they perceive as being important for both the preservation and creation of value. PE managers believe that 40% of their portfolio companies are moderately negatively affected and 10% are very negatively affected by the pandemic. The private equity managers—both investment and operating partners—are actively engaged in the operations, governance, and financing in all of their current portfolio companies. These activities are more intensively pursued in those companies that have been more severely affected by the Covid-19 pandemic. As a result of the pandemic, they expect the performance of their existing funds to decline. They are more pessimistic about that decline than the venture capitalists (VCs) surveyed in Gompers et al. (2021). Despite the pandemic, private equity managers are seeking new investments. Rather than focusing on cost cutting, PE investors place a much greater weight on revenue growth for value creation. Relative to the 2012 survey results reported in Gompers, Kaplan, and Mukharlyamov (2016), they appear to give a larger equity stake to management teams and target somewhat lower returns.     

The Performance of Local versus Foreign Mutual Fund Managers

In this paper we examine the performance of US equity funds (locals) versus UK equity funds (foreigners) also investing in the US equity market. Based on informational disadvantages one would expect the UK funds to under‐perform the US funds, especially in the research‐intensive small company market. After controlling for tax treatment, fund objectives, investment style and time‐variation in betas, we do not find evidence for this. In the small company segment we even find a slight out‐performance for UK funds compared to US funds. Finally we observe a home bias in the UK portfolios, which is partly attributable to UK funds investing in cross‐listed stocks in the USA.     

University of Texas Roundtable on LP Perspectives on the State of Private Equity

In this wide‐ranging discussion among four limited partner investors in private equity, the LPs commented on the rates of return they expect from PE, the fees they pay their general partners, and the length of their time commitments to PE investments. After noting the enormous growth in the value of assets under private management, and the reduction in public equity investment by many large institutional investors, each of the four LPs said that their institutions expected to maintain or continue to increase their proportion of portfolio investment in PE. The LP panelists were virtually unanimous in expecting PE rates of return in the 9%‐11% range, as compared to 7%‐8% for public equities. The panelists also seemed to agree that although committing to PE investments for terms longer than the traditional seven to ten years could result in higher returns and lower costs, they were reluctant to make such commitments because they valued the financial flexibility afforded by shorter holding periods. Several LPs claimed that their institutions were scrutinizing the explicit and implicit fees charged by the GPs, and the level of fees was encouraging LPs to co‐invest in deals alongside the GPs. And in response to a closing suggestion that the recent flurry of IPOs could signify the beginning of a major reversal away from private capital, another LP expressed strong doubt, noting that “the private ownership model has clearly shown superior governance, and greater ability to manage leveraged capital structures and create value than public companies over the long term.”     

Investment income taxes and private equity acquisition activity

Utilizing a novel identification strategy, we uncover evidence that reducing the investment income tax rate increases acquisition activity by private equity acquirers. Applying a difference-in-difference methodology, we find that acquisitions sponsored by private equity firms nearly doubled following the investment income tax rate reductions associated with the Taxpayer Relief Act of 1997 and the Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2003. We attribute our findings to private equity fund structures and managing partners’ ability to capture the expected benefit of lower capital gains tax rates. These findings are robust to controlling for target shareholders’ tax incentives, as well as firm, industry, and macroeconomic factors possibly influencing acquisition activity.