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Private equity, corporate governance and vampires

Filed in archive corporate governance by leon on July 10, 2007

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At the beginning of this month, I raised the question of whether the private equity party is over. But the events of the past week have shown me that the reports of private equity's death are exaggerated. More to the point, private equity is like a vampire.

More on that later. First to the events of the past week.

First we saw jailbird Paris Hilton's grandfather Barron Hilton sell the hotel chain that bears their name to Blackstone. Then Blackstone's arch-rival Kohlberg Kravis Roberts announced it was going public. What that signals is that the barbarians want to turn private equity into a diversified financial services provider, like Goldman Sachs or Morgan Stanley. The private equity sharks are also circling around Richard Branson's Virgin Media.

So why vampires? Because like a vampire, you don't kill private equity that easily. Contrary to what we have been told by Hollywood and Buffy, you don't really kill them by sticking a stake into their hearts. Students of vampire lorelinks know that vampires stay Undead for centuries, just waiting for the right moment to strike. Similarly, the amount of money sloshing into the system and relatively low interest rates mean that tighter credit and investors fleeing to safer ground will not kill private equity. The big private equity firms will just sit back, size up the opportunities...and wait for the right moment to strike.

It's a point I examine in this piece that I co-wrote last week.

"There's been a lot of noise over the past few weeks, but it is still a relatively favorable environment. These are some of the smartest people around, and if the economy takes a downturn, they'll have issues but still have flexibility," Eric Weber, a managing director with boutique management consulting firm Freeman & Co told Forbes.

With private equity going public and private companies going public, we are now entering a new age of different ownership structures and that has profound implications for corporate governance. A company's corporate governance is not the end game. Boards around the world will be looking at these different structures and asking what model suits their own strategy. In other words, corporate governance might well be viewed as a question of strategic choice.






Permalink: Private equity, corporate governance and vampires
Tags: private  equity  Hilton  KKR  Blackstone  corporate  private+equity  corporate+governance 

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