Private Equity in the U.S.: Building a New Future

Despite the recent downturn, private equity firms still have an important role to play in the global economy. At the same time, many PE firms may need to rethink their strategies. Practices that have been worked in the past may not produce acceptable returns in a future, particularly given the current constraints on financing and leverage. One source of PE's comparative advantage, as demonstrated during the recent crisis, has been the ability of the best and most experienced firms to reorganize their portfolio companies when they get into financial trouble. But in addition to their financial management skills, specialized operating expertise has become more critical to success, and those PE firms that have not acquired it are especially likely to find that past success in raising capital is no guarantee of success in the future. The authors begin by providing a brief overview of the past three decades of global private equity to identify how the market arrived at its current position. Using the findings of academic research together with case studies and interviews with PE practitioners in the U.K., the authors suggest a number of building blocks for the future that reflect the considerable success of the most reputable and experienced PE firms in increasing the value of their portfolio companies.     

Beyond convenience: the future for independent food and grocery retailers in the UK

The UK's independent food and grocery retail sector's competitive advantage of 'convenience' has been eroded in recent years as major retailers increase opening hours and develop their own convenience trading formats. As a result, large numbers of independent retailers are closing. A UK-wide survey was undertaken to identify other sources of competitive advantages, and the changes needed to stop or reverse the decline in this sector. Exploratory semi-structured interviews led to the development of a questionnaire on six major issues affecting the sector. 'Snowball' sampling, using industry partners, provided 142 respondents. The provision of a 'social shopping experience' emerged as a key competitive advantage that could be developed. Improving vertical and horizontal trading alliances, and the wider use of information technology, provided other options.     

Agroindustrialization through institutional innovation Transaction costs, cooperatives and milk-market development in the east-African highlands

Some small-holders are able to generate reliable and substantial income flows through small-scale dairy production for the local market; for others, a set of unique transaction costs hinders participation. Cooperative selling institutions are potential catalysts for mitigating these costs, stimulating entry into the market, and promoting growth in rural communities. Trends in cooperative organization in east-African dairy are evaluated. Empirical work focuses on alternative techniques for effecting participation among a representative sample of peri-urban milk producers in the Ethiopian highlands. The variables considered are a modern production practice (cross-bred cow use), a traditional production practice (indigenous-cow use), three intellectual-capital-forming variables (experience, education, and extension), and the provision of infrastructure (as measured by time to transport milk to market). A Tobit analysis of marketable surplus generates precise estimates of non-participants' 'distances' to market and their reservation levels of the covariates — measures of the inputs necessary to sustain and enhance the market. Policy implications focus on the availability of cross-bred stock and the level of market infrastructure, both of which have marked effects on participation, the velocity of transactions in the local community and, inevitably, the social returns to agroindustrialization.     

‘Never let a good crisis go to waste’: moral entrepreneurship,or the fine art of recycling evil into good

Moral entrepreneurship is the fine art of recycling evil into good by taking advantage of situations given or constructed as crises. It should be seen as the ultimate generalisation of the entrepreneurial spirit, whose peculiar excesses have always sat uneasily with homo oeconomicus as the constrained utility maximiser, an image that itself has come to be universalised. A task of this essay is to reconcile the two images in terms of what by the end I call ‘superutilitarianism’, which draws on the lore of both superheroes and utilitarianism. After briefly surveying the careers of three exemplars of the moral entrepreneur (Robert McNamara, George Soros and Jeffrey Sachs), I explore the motives of moral entrepreneurs in terms of their standing debt to society for having already caused unnecessary harm but which also now equips him with the skill set needed to do significant good. Such a mindset involves imagining oneself a vehicle of divine will, which would be a scary proposition had it not been long presumed by Christians touched by Calvin. In conclusion, I argue that moral entrepreneurship looks most palatable – and perhaps even attractive – if the world is ‘reversible’, in the sense that every crisis, however clumsily handled by the moral entrepreneur, causes people to distinguish more clearly the necessary from contingent features of their existence. This leads them to reconceptualise past damages as new opportunities to assert what really matters; hence, a ‘superutilitarian’ ethic that treats all suffering as less cost than investment in a greater sense of the good.     

Errata

Previous theoretical work suggests that it is appropriate to adjust the CAPM for information contained in analysts' earnings forecasts. This paper uses non-parametric statistical methods to test the relation between estimation risk and security returns. The evidence supports the theory that neglected firms earn abnormally high risk adjusted returns.     

Mapping and analysing virtual outcrops

Laser scanning is a very efficient way to generate realistic, high-resolution digital models of 3-D geological outcrops. This paper discusses the methodologies involved in the creation and analysis of virtual outcrops, based on laser scanner data. The visualisation of the laser scanner data as a photorealistic 3-D object is described. Geological features picked out on the virtual outcrop (e.g. fractures, faults or bedding planes) can be extrapolated outward, into space, and inward, into the subsurface, using tension surfaces.