The Expert

In conversation: The real cost of ESG

With a spate of new rules hitting the industry, alongside increasing LP demands, how much does it actually cost to be ESG compliant and how can these efforts be more than just a cost centre?

Comment: Ensuring insurers and pension funds invest in PE

Eric de Montgolfier, CEO of Invest Europe, says amendments voted on in July offer a unique opportunity to address the shortcomings of Solvency II

Column: ChatGPT: Enhancement or hindrance?

Natalia Ramsden of Sofos Associates considers the ways AI applications such as ChatGPT could both boost and diminish human cognition

Comment: Comply or get off the pension pots

Mayer Brown lawyers examine how defined benefit occupational pension schemes add an additional layer of complexity when a PE firm acquires a distressed business.

Comment: Financing for the future

Proskauer’s Cameron Roper and Paul Tannenbaum explain why it is vital to get the structure and financing right for secondaries

The valuation conundrum

Malcolm Goddard, COO of Zetland Capital, questions whether the industry built up to assess PE valuations is fit for purpose

Comment: A generative approach

Beyond AI's mainstream buzz, increasing applications for private equity are becoming impossible to ignore, according to Lantern’s Tom Richardson

Comment: Mulling cyber risks

Abacus Group CTO Paul Ponzeka examines how to manage third-party security risks without compromising on competitive edge

Searching for harmony

The Riverside Company's Dörte Höppner assesses the competing ESG standards impacting PE and how they could be more in tune with each other

Comment: Avoiding the tripwires

Pinsent Masons partner Mark Shaw details how to avoid regulatory issues when distributing non-EU funds within the EU

Comment: Baby don’t harm me

Patricia Volhard (partner) and John Young (international counsel) at Debevoise & Plimpton say the concept of ‘do no significant harm' in the SFDR is becoming clearer

Comment: Cutting through conflicts in GP-led transactions

Travers Smith’s Victoria Bramall and James Ravden outline five strategies to mitigate conflicts in GP-led deals

Column: You are worth it

Executive coach Cressida Hamilton, of Chryse Coaching, provides advice to COOs on how to demonstrate their value

Comment: Decision delegation

Hamish Paget-Brown, associate at ECI Partners , explores the potential of AI to lead decision making in the private equity market.

Comment: Preparing for regulatory changes in 2023

Ros Clark, regulatory risk assistant director, NatWest Trustee & Depositary Services details the upcoming regulatory changes financial services firms need to prepare for in 2023.

Comment: Future-proofing operational models key to supporting global GP ambitions

Elliot Refson, head of funds at Jersey Finance, says the jurisdiction’s JPF and LLC structures provide stability in a turbulent environment

Column: Walking on eggshells

Zetland Capital COO Malcolm Goddard explores the possible implications of ATAD III, also known as the Unshelling Directive, on holding companies

Column: A mindfully bigger brain

Natalia Ramsden of Sofos Associates discusses the benefits of meditation as the golden ticket to brain hacking

The conversation: Are you prepared? Liquidity strategies in a turbulent market

The Drawdown hosted a webinar to discuss how managers can respond to liquidity and risk management challenges that have been thrown into sharp focus in recent weeks

Comment: Transforming the alternative investment industry

Alter Domus's chief commercial officer Alex Traub discusses the fund administrator's digital transformation

Comment: Welcome to the altverse

Rafay, Farooqui, founder and CEO of +SUBSCRIBE, outlines the need for a novel private markets' digital tech stack to replace fragmented, manual and paper-based workflows of the past

Comment: Empowering the middle office

Patrycja Dos Santos, middle office specialist at AssetMetrix, shares her thoughts on the need for a full middle office services platform and current trends towards tech-enabled solutions

Comment: DORA - a paradigm shift

Robert D Maddox and Tristan Lockwood at Debevoise & Plimpton assess new continuity requirements and suggest organisational and technical changes will be needed to comply

Comment: Antitrust in me

Merger enforcers turn up the heat on private equity: what can you do to stay cool?

Comment: Why the DPI performance metric is so important to investors today

ECI’s Jeremy Lytle urges private equity firms to use appropriate performance metrics as macroeconomic turbulence attracts greater investor scrutiny

Column: The power of reflection

As the year draws to a close, Nikki Swan - founder of Mindful Swan, explores the benefits of self-reflection and the ways in which it can support achieving goals

The great talent depression

Natalia Ramsden of Sofos Associates believes private equity firms can be doing much more to better understand, and therefore attract fresh talent

Comment: Known or knowable? It depends

Nic Müller, CEO of Avega Capital Management, looks at a recent clarification to the IPEV guidelines, and hopes greater harmonisation is coming

Column: You are what you eat

Natalia Ramsden of Sofos Associates highlights the importance of nutrition when it comes to performance

Comment: The dangers of an uncertain legacy

History bears witness to the destructive potential of unplanned succession, but private equity and VC funds aren't planning for it, especially in Europe. Diana Meyel, managing partner at Cipio Partners, considers the dangers and strategies surrounding a strangely unexamined issue

Looking back to look forward

By looking back at how and where the international funds industry has evolved, we can better understand how the sector might develop in the future, argues Elliot Refson, head of funds at Jersey Finance

Comment: Negotiating GP stakes deals in uncertain times

Lawyers from Cleary Gottlieb say careful negotiation of key terms will be more important than ever

Comment: Co-sourcing

Kimberly Kale, head of operations for the PE Back Office at Allvue Systems explains how GPs can have their data and their fund administrators too, without complicating their data flows

Comment: We need to talk about valuations, or face a credibility crisis

Robert Quartly-Janeiro, IR consultant and former LSE Visiting Fellow urges GPs to face the music

Column: Tricky maths

Dörte Höppner, chief sustainability officer at the Riverside Company, explores the complexities of collecting ESG data

Comment: UK LP reform package

Goodwin lawyers outline key proposals of the UK limited partnership legislative reform package introduced in the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Bill

Comment: Brexit and PE - where are we now?

John Young, international counsel at Debevoise & Plimpton, highlights growing concerns around the EU granting equivalence to the UK and the implications for PE firms

Comment: Coming to terms

Steven Ward and Anjuli Chatterjee of Squire Patton Boggs compare and contrast fund terms between VC and PE, and ask how both might change in an increasingly challenging funding environment

Comment: The Mother of Invention

James Wood, investment funds partner at Hogan Lovells in Sydney, explores fund structuring innovations throughout the APAC region

Column: Reality check

You are the creator of your own reality, writes Thomas Woodland, The Private Equity Coach

The most influential fund finance experts of 2022

Charting the market’s movers and makers

Comment: The world has changed - how are lenders and markets reacting?

With great challenge comes great opportunity, writes Mohith Sondhi, senior director – debt finance at OakNorth Bank

Data, cyber security and AI compliance: managing the evolving landscape

Debevoise & Plimpton’s Robert Maddox and Martha Hirst detail how new cyber and privacy rules from regulators worldwide will impact PE firms, and provide five key tips to stay ahead

Setting the record straight

Eric de Montgolfier, CEO of Invest Europe goes beyond the fiction and details the facts about private equity and venture capital in Europe

More signal, less noise: enhancing the UK’s position as a fund domicile

Despite housing the largest asset management industry in Europe, the UK ranks behind other jurisdictions as a domicile of choice for UCITS and AIFs

Column: Ukraine and ESG

The humanitarian crisis in Ukraine has put ESG into sharp focus for private equity firms, writes Riverside Europe’s COO Dörte Höppner

Comment: Keep your head in the cloud to track ESG

To be good at ESG investing you need an exceptional ESG tracking system, which requires the power of the cloud, writes Ben Harrison of Intapp

Comment: ESG and PE in Asia: rules of attraction

Stephanie Keen, leader of Hogan Lovells’ corporate & finance practice in Asia Pacific and associate Amelia Lee detail regulatory developments putting ESG firmly on the map in Asia.

Column: A song of ice and fire

SOFOS Associates’ Natalia Ramsden continues her series of detailing various techniques and treatments for enhancing cognitive performance - this time looking at hot and cold therapies

Column: The illusion of two paradigms and its impact on performance

Depending on whether you’re in the outside-in or the inside-out paradigm, your behaviour will vary significantly. But only one of them is real and understanding this leads to considerable outperformance, writes executive coach Thomas Woodland

Could NLP be the silver bullet for the asset servicing industry’s challenges?

Tim Mietus of Citco Technology Management asks if natural language processing could be an essential tool for data integration in lieu of greater industry standardisation and ever-growing capacity woes

Comment: Fund forecast

Mohith Sondhi of OakNorth Bank shares his top predictions as macroeconomic challenges intensify

The oxygen effect

Natalia Ramsden of SOFOS Associates details the cognitive improvements that can be achieved with hyperbaric oxygen therapy

Leading managers embrace a new standard in contract negotiation

Troy Pospisil, CEO and founder of Ontra, charts the adoption of legal tech by blue chip private equity firms

Comment: Make it hard for hackers

Drawbridge CEO Jason Elmer explores cybersecurity threats for PE firms and portfolio companies and explains why preventing easy access is key to mitigating breaches

Private equity and hedge funds’ cyber security demands converge

Tom Cole, managing director - UK & Europe, Abacus Group, charts private equity’s increasing needs for robust cyber security,

CTOs: Dealing with (unfair?) pressure

Alex Tyler and Ingolv Urnes of psKINETIC look at the challenges and successful coping strategies

Comment: Unlocking private markets’ ESG potential

Hemal Mehta, founder and CEO of AtomInvest discusses the importance of sophisticated tech when it comes to ESG data collection, analysis and reporting

“C-Suite and non-competes in the age of the tweet” – restrictive covenants and social media

Proskauer Rose’s Dorothy Murray and Nicola Bartholomew discuss the increasingly blurred lines when it comes to non-competes and personal social media accounts

Let’s talk about the data

Tim Friedman, founder of PE Stack, discusses all things data, including the adoption of alternative data sources and how to create a data plan