Primer on private equity

Examining PE and infrastructure alternatives

Private equity, private debt and infrastructure investing are popular with institutional investors because payoffs complement the publicly traded parts of portfolios.

Private equity in balanced portfolios

Should a well-balanced portfolio include stakes in interesting private firms? (These include upstart biotech ventures with promising inventions they’re taking to market, as well as companies with a sharp bead on new ways of distributing green energy to consumers, for example.)

Help clients get into private equity

The Facebook IPO is an excellent, although somewhat exceptional, example of the benefits of private-equity investing: it offers a vehicle for investors to profit from the growth of closely held companies, as opposed to investing in companies available to the masses.

Strong private equity performance attracts investors

Three years into a North American economic recovery of slow but steady GDP growth, most investors have not seen improved economic performance translate into portfolio earnings. Yet despite the headwinds facing public markets, private equity continues to represent an alternative investment strategy that is delivering sustained investor returns.

Private equity: Start up or buy out?

There seem to be cycles in private company investing. Those with long memories will remember Michael Milken and junk bonds. In recent memory, there were the venture firms of the Silicon Valley that went bust at the beginning of the decade, or more recently still, buyouts whose coda was supplied by the failure of the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan to take Bell Canada private.