Roland Berger sponsored event: Oxford Private Equity Forum
The UK office sponsored the 6th Annual Oxford Private Equity Forum which was hosted by the Saïd Business School, University of Oxford on Wednesday May 05, 2010. This year's forum was themed "Private Equity: 20 months into a new era" and focused on the key challenges in the new, post-crisis era for private equity firms, their investors and portfolio companies, and other stakeholders.
Jon Moulton, founder of Alchemy Partners and more recently, Better Capital, delivered a highly engaging keynote speech to an audience of about 300 corporate attendees summarising the key challenges for the industry in the current macro-economic climate. The forum hosted five panel discussions, two of which included participants from Roland Berger.
David Stern was the Roland Berger speaker in the panel discussion titled "Trends in the Secondary Market and Portfolio Optimisation", which focused on how the current economic climate is impacting the private equity industry overall and how it is contributing to the development of the secondary market. This panel analysed the developments in the private equity secondary market over recent years, to what extent the financial crisis might have contributed to its development, and what its current situation and future outlook really are.
Besides focusing on the potential of the secondary market in particular, the panel also discussed the relevance of its development for institutional investors managing several different asset classes at once, the importance of portfolio theory and portfolio optimisation in practice, and how to approach and solve these challenging issues in the mid-future.
Other speakers on the panel were Mark Burch, Managing Partner, ARCIS; Mark Drugan, Capital Dynamics; Francois-Marius Garcin, Co-Founder of Fidequity and Francesco di Valmarana, Principal, Pantheon Ventures.
Klaus Kremers was our panelist in the panel discussion titled "From Financial Engineering to Restructuring and Performance Improvement", which largely focused on how financial engineering alone is failing to deliver returns and what private equity owners need to do to deliver value through the improvement of portfolio companies' strategy and operations. This panel addressed to what extent there is still room to create outstanding returns by financial engineering, restructuring and operational improvements. Key questions that were discussed included:
> What can be the “next trend” in exploiting value that hasn’t been realised yet?
> Are there options for further improved governance?
> What has been the investment theses of recently conducted buyouts and how do private equity professionals assess the risk of fundamentally troubled Western markets?
> Might upcoming inflation become an interesting driver of nominal returns?
Other speakers on the panel were Edward Chan, Managing Director, Bain Capital; Markus Gosler, Senior Partner, Graphite Capital; Christopher Hodges, Director, The Carlyle Group and Ben Johnson, Founding Principal, Vitruvian Partners.
At the end of the day-long event, there was a Roland Berger-sponsored evening drinks and canapé reception at the Ashmolean Museum, which has been recently modernised at a cost of GBP 61m and houses an extensive art collection. More details about the event can be found at:
Jon Moulton, founder of Alchemy Partners and more recently, Better Capital, delivered a highly engaging keynote speech to an audience of about 300 corporate attendees summarising the key challenges for the industry in the current macro-economic climate. The forum hosted five panel discussions, two of which included participants from Roland Berger.
David Stern was the Roland Berger speaker in the panel discussion titled "Trends in the Secondary Market and Portfolio Optimisation", which focused on how the current economic climate is impacting the private equity industry overall and how it is contributing to the development of the secondary market. This panel analysed the developments in the private equity secondary market over recent years, to what extent the financial crisis might have contributed to its development, and what its current situation and future outlook really are.
Besides focusing on the potential of the secondary market in particular, the panel also discussed the relevance of its development for institutional investors managing several different asset classes at once, the importance of portfolio theory and portfolio optimisation in practice, and how to approach and solve these challenging issues in the mid-future.
Other speakers on the panel were Mark Burch, Managing Partner, ARCIS; Mark Drugan, Capital Dynamics; Francois-Marius Garcin, Co-Founder of Fidequity and Francesco di Valmarana, Principal, Pantheon Ventures.
Klaus Kremers was our panelist in the panel discussion titled "From Financial Engineering to Restructuring and Performance Improvement", which largely focused on how financial engineering alone is failing to deliver returns and what private equity owners need to do to deliver value through the improvement of portfolio companies' strategy and operations. This panel addressed to what extent there is still room to create outstanding returns by financial engineering, restructuring and operational improvements. Key questions that were discussed included:
> What can be the “next trend” in exploiting value that hasn’t been realised yet?
> Are there options for further improved governance?
> What has been the investment theses of recently conducted buyouts and how do private equity professionals assess the risk of fundamentally troubled Western markets?
> Might upcoming inflation become an interesting driver of nominal returns?
Other speakers on the panel were Edward Chan, Managing Director, Bain Capital; Markus Gosler, Senior Partner, Graphite Capital; Christopher Hodges, Director, The Carlyle Group and Ben Johnson, Founding Principal, Vitruvian Partners.
At the end of the day-long event, there was a Roland Berger-sponsored evening drinks and canapé reception at the Ashmolean Museum, which has been recently modernised at a cost of GBP 61m and houses an extensive art collection. More details about the event can be found at:
