How to Avoid Romance of the Deal through Cold-Hearted Diligence This paper attempts to address these issues while presenting summary critical considerations that can and do mitigate the likelihood of unintended consequences and deals that fail to deliver. Specifically, it will speak to how advisors and buyers can verify and substantiate the most critical and yet intangible value drivers in a deal. Recently, private equity has been in the news again. Roughly one month ago, Elizabeth Warren announced new proposed legislation—the Wall Street Looting Act—intended to curb “useless speculation,” encourage “economic patriotism,” while targeting “vampires” intent on “bleeding companies dry”.…
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Private Equity’s Fast and Furious Entry into Healthcare (Part III of III) The third of this three-part series examines why private equity and venture capital firms are targeting the healthcare industry and the issues that they encounter managing their healthcare portfolio. Private equity (PE) and venture capital (VC) firms are attracted by the potential for growth that exists in the healthcare industry; however, significant barriers also exist that may limit the expansion of PE and VC in healthcare, including the requirement for specialized knowledge to understand the operations of a clinical services provider, healthcare industry specific regulatory issues, latent long…
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Past Performance is No Longer a Viable Valuation Tactic: Learn to Anticipate Future Prospects with Data Mining, Proprietary Benchmark Techniques, and a Close Look at Both Cash Flow and Capital Expenditures. Caleb Slabbert, writing at VentureCapital.org, which bills itself as a non-profit organization that has been “a premier resource for both entrepreneurs seeking funding and for investors who want to help promising young companies achieve their potential,” asserted this week (3/26/13) that past performance of a company is no longer a viable valuation tactic. What matters? Newer techniques that many firms aren’t taking advantage of:
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A Premium Multiple is Hard to Come By and Harder to Keep; Owners Should Worry More About Improving Performance Susan Nolen Foushee, Tim Koller, and Anand Mehta make the case in McKinsey Quarterly that executives considering company value often worry too much about their company’s multiple (e.g., a P/E ratio, or EV/EBIDTA, etc.) instead of focusing on company growth. It isn’t that multiples aren’t legitimate data to consider. But multiples can vary widely if a company is comparing itself to the wrong set of competitors. Multiples legitimately vary considerably based on the leverage a company is currently using and…
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From attempting to recast the public image of private equity to trying to forge a new investment firm, 10 individuals profiled in the June issue of Mergers & Acquisitions are making their marks on middle-market investing, Tamika Cody, Mary Kathleen Flynn and Danielle Fugazy report. From the intro: To highlight a few: Pam Hendrickson, chief operating officer of the Riverside Co. and a director of the global Association for Corporate Growth, has been spreading the word on Capitol Hill, and across the country, that private capital matters to the growth of the U.S. economy. Andrew Sheiner, a managing director…