PE4FAMs Blog

American business is like a Ferrari. It purrs at 140 mph, corners well at half that speed and is coveted by everyone. The US dollar, our capital markets, the US banking system, our rule of law, easy capital flows, startup successes, invention, innovation and orderly corporate governance all come together with a throaty purr just […]

A recent article in the June 30, 2016 edition of The Wall Street Journal by Norm Champ titled “An Iniquitous Raid on Private Equity” highlights the latest intrusion by the SEC on the freedom of private equity managers to arrange their relationships with their portfolio companies. In an enforcement action against a private equity firm

Early in my career I read great advice for surviving the world of financial prediction: “Give them a date and give them a number, but never give them both at the same time”. The profession of making business predictions is a graveyard for professionals who almost got it right.  The business world demands reliability and

Coming back from Ft. Wayne Indiana last week I drove for 1 ½ hours in my Subaru Outback without touching the accelerator or brake! I actually went for almost ½ mile with no hands on the steering wheel. That experiment ended when a red warning light started to flash a message on my navigation screen,

I don’t get why this $26 billion deal makes sense. I guess it is like buying Facebook or You Tube but without any retail consumers. I use Twitter solely to receive business and sports information and “follow” people and organizations whose opinion I admire. I do not use Facebook because I want to be private

The sound barrier has been broken by all the TV networks and my ears are hurting badly. It is only June 15, 2016 and the big onslaught of paid for political garbage hasn’t even started and I still feel like I fell asleep next to an amplifier at a Grateful Dead concert. The incessant screeching

Daniel Yergin is to oil what Seth Klarman is to stock Picking. I hold each of them in high esteem for being experts in their respective worlds. Mr. Yergin is a Pulitzer Prize winning author for his history of the petroleum industry from 1850 through 1990. Reviews call his book “The Prize” a “bible” and

We recently received a Private Equity factsheet from Preqin. Founded in 2003 Preqin has become a trusted source of information about alternative asset strategies like private equity, venture capital, real estate, hedge funds and mezzanine funds. Many alternative asset managers share their performance statistics with Preqin and we are always interested in the trends they are

I am sure the Department of Labor did not intend to benefit private equity sponsors when it announced it’s new “stockbrokers are fiduciaries” program. The fall out may already be starting, I was surprised to learn that JP Morgan will not allow its brokers to solicit trades in “non-investment grade” issuers. I really was shocked

We had lunch with the Chairman of one of our portfolio companies last week. He is a successful entrepreneur who owns and operates several businesses. By his own admission he loves business. However all the capitalists at the table agreed that the slow death by a thousand cuts of governmental regulation and red tape is