Style shift

当面临10亿美元的风险时，资产管理公司愿意保持灵活性。以电池风险投资公司为例，该公司在2000年6月完成了一轮10亿美元的融资，接近科技投资热潮的顶峰。当时，该公司宣布，该基金将“在电信和B2B电子商务等领域，在全球范围内寻找最好的初创企业和早期投资机会。”如今，随着有希望的早期交易几乎消失，Battery重新定义了其使命：除了早期交易，它正寻求通过收购来实现投资组合的多样化，它认为收购风险较小，不太可能需要额外注入现金。”我们希望找到隐藏的珠宝并运用我们的技能，”Todd Dagres说，他是这家位于马萨诸塞州Wellesley的公司的普通合伙人，曾经为Akamai Technologies和Convergent Networks等热门高科技初创企业提供早期融资，目前专注于收购早期投资仍然是我们的生计，但在这种环境下，你必须保持开放和机会主义。”

在一个不断变化的投资环境中接受新的机会是有道理的，但对于风投基金及其有限合伙人来说，这也是一个艰难且具有潜在风险的风格转变。收购基金和风险投资基金的技能组合、客户和投资目标在重要方面有所不同。风险资本家培育新公司；收购专业人士塑造了老年人。

And changes in direction tend to make investors nervous. Real Desroches, who oversees $4.4 billion in alternative investments for the California State Teachers, Retirement System pension fund, says: "In general, funds should stick to the strategies they initially proposed. If you want to go on a safari, you want to go with people who,ve been to Africa before."

许多市场人士指出，收购公司Hicks、Muse、Tate&Furst是私募股权多元化失败的典型代表。这家总部位于达拉斯的公司对少数几家电信公司的10亿美元投资最终破产，造成巨额亏损。尽管这是一家受人尊敬的并购公司，但也有人担心，同样的事情可能会发生在一家进入一项考虑不周的并购交易的风投机构身上。

然而，这种前景并没有吓跑许多风险投资家。在广泛定义的投资参数的帮助下，Battery只是越来越多专注于早期交易，但现在却在四处寻找收购的公司之一。”“这是我们将要看到的东西的早期边缘，”Generation Partners联席主管马克詹宁斯（MarkJennings）说筹集到10亿美元或以上资金的风险企业正在寻找能够投入更多资金的交易，这意味着收购。”

一代本身就是这种投资重叠的分支。凭借3.25亿美元的管理层，该公司是一个混合动力，通过设计，投资于企业和延期交易以及买断以及在纽约和旧金山设有办事处。这种混合动力车的数量正在增长，风险投资和买断基金之间的伙伴关系是较大的。

但可以冒险资本家在买断领土中茁壮成长？有理由持怀疑态度。VC业务往往比买断组小，管理层较少，每次交易投资较少，人们减少分析和监督投资。投资方法也不同。"In an early-stage deal, you,re trying to understand the technology risks, the financing risks, the market risks and the management risks," says Jonathan Silver, a general partner at Core Capital Partners, a Washington, D.C., venture fund. "In a later-stage or buyout deal, you,re trying to understand the risks of the transactional structure, the operational elements of a company and the operating efficiencies that are extant or available. It's the difference between launching or leveraging a company."

事实上,很多人说风险投资家经常下timate the differences between the two. Martin Gagen, who runs the U.S. operations of 3i Group, a leading international venture capital firm based in the U.K., notes that there is a major distinction in the way general partners relate to managements: "With a late-stage or buyout, you,re acting as a full board member helping to create value. You afford them more respect about what they,ve done. At the early stage you,re more of a sounder and creative thinker about how to build that company."

预测John Hawkins，经营其旧金山办事处的一代人，“大多数[VC]公司将获得混合结果。”在相关的同时，这两个领域的差异足以使技能转移困难。“这就像一个试图做神经外科的骨疗法，”霍金斯说。

更重要的是，风险资本家可能会发现自己从煎锅中跳进火灾。有很多杠杆的买断资金也无法部署已经提高的资金数十亿美元。它们也拖网买断，使市场适用于可用的房地产竞争激烈，即使它正在增长。

尽管如此，VC资金尝试的强大原因。一个是39家公司对一般合作伙伴的压力，以10亿美元或以上，正在努力投资资金。有限的合作伙伴对超大资金和未定的管理费用感到不满，通常运行1.5％至3％的承诺资本。其中一些资金而不是退货，而不是退货，将努力将钱放在其他地方。“这是绝望的，在某种程度上，沮丧是令人沮丧的，”HT资本顾问总裁Eric Lomas说，一个私人举行的投资银行，也投资于私募股权的私募股权。“没有交易与那里的钱有关。”

On that score the buyout market , while highly competitive , does offer some encouragement. Strategic buyers, such as Cisco Systems and Broadcom Corp., which used their high-priced stocks during the bubble to make acquisitions, have grown leery of doing deals now that their shares and cash reserves have plummeted. Meanwhile, boards of financially healthy companies are wary of making acquisitions because of the Enron Corp. debacle. They fear that public markets may punish them for creating complex new entities. There is also growing pressure on conglomerates to reevaluate which divisions and businesses are central to their strategies. In time, that will bring many more buyouts to market as companies seek to shed noncore assets to reduce opacity in their financial statements.

在繁荣期间也有公众的分数，但这已成为需要资金的堕落天使。“市场正在告诉你，公众的许多公司应该是私人的，特别是在技术领域，”代的詹宁斯说。Timothy Dibble，Alta Communications的一个创始人和管理普通合伙人，波士顿的10亿美元买断基金，强调了积极的：“为什么不整体或部分重组所有这些公共和私营公司，并利用其他人的开始现在值10美分。“

Some investors believe these kinds of buyouts of operating companies are less risky than seed investments. "If you buy an operating company, it's easier to manage by an order of magnitude," says HT Capital's Lomas. "It's a cakewalk to give guidance to a seasoned management team. In early-stage investments you have to season the management team."

有限合伙人可以从这两个市场中得到一些安慰，这两个市场共同构成了被称为私募股权（privatequity）的资产类别。上世纪90年代初，当这两个市场都崩溃时，风险投资公司通过后期投资来照顾他们的投资组合公司，并进行收购。当风险资本家在上世纪90年代末的科技股繁荣时期开始大举套现时，嫉妒的杠杆收购公司开始向科技风险投资公司发起攻击。当然，希克斯缪斯和其他人，可能希望它没有。现在是风投盯着收购市场。

最近转变的一部分是自然的。这是在创业周期中迟到的，风险资本家倾向于做补充融资而不是播种新公司的时间。“我们，在纽约Mercer Management Consulting的私募股权业务副总裁Neal Pomroy表示，我们看到了对后期交易的重大转变。”“这些公司的收益最低规模，更接近增长资本阶段，而不是概念发展阶段。人们喜欢风险参数更好，票证大小和信心上升。”研究公司Venturedone的说法，2001年，阶段投资增加到2001年融资的62％，而1995年，则为1995年的51％。

Most of all, the trend is simply confusing to investors. "Some of the larger VC funds are beginning to look more like buyout funds," says Core Capital's Silver. "They don,t intend a wholesale makeover, but they,re increasingly taking on some of the financing and deal-structuring roles that buyout firms have. Any large VC fund that puts $35 million or $50 million into a deal looks a lot more like a buyout fund than a start-up deal."

Indeed, general partners at several buyout firms report facing competition from traditionally venture-oriented firms. None of these has yet closed a deal, however; in part, that's because chastened capital markets have been leery of lending the leveraged portion for some buyouts.

The venture capital firms are also staffing themselves for more buyout business. Example: Last November Battery hired Stephen Terry, an investment banking veteran who had worked most recently at Credit Suisse First Boston.

在VC和出租的公司之间的互联网泡沫的高度时，收购的新兴趣跟随了一个合作的合作。游戏计划是与他们的初创企业结婚，并专注于收购技术公司。例如，在1999年，整体资本合作伙伴是VC公司Kleiner，Perkins，Caufield＆Byers，共同创立的买断公司银湖合作伙伴，并筹集了22亿美元的基金。2000年3月，基金领导了希捷技术磁盘驱动部门的20亿美元买断。从那时起，希捷已成为服务器的磁盘驱动器的主导供应商，正在展示盈利，并可能去公众。

但是从更传统的风险投资公司的买断可能导致有限伙伴的问题，他们可能会发现自己有意外的曝光，以及比他们的意图更集中的投资组合。投资者通常分配他们的资本，以平衡高风险的高奖励风险资金，以防止利用债务增加奖励的低风险收购资金。

即使没有风险资金在内部平衡风险。做买断可能会让人扰乱这种平衡。“历史上的VC基金的一件事是重点风险管理的大量焦点，即使他们在一个领域中，核心资本的银说，一个关键工具也在一个相对广泛的公司中的多样化。“但是如果您开始将大量资金大块放入较少数量的交易，则会失去一些能力管理跨投资风险的能力。”

To some extent, limited partners have only themselves to blame. They have been pressuring venture capitalists to do something with their billions of dollars of uncommitted capital or to stop collecting fat fees on idle funds. That has left the more than three dozen "gigafunds," which each have raised more than $1 billion, with a dilemma: They can return capital to investors, trim management fees or diversify into new fields.

“以目前的速度，花费所有的资金需要25年，”J。硅谷VantagePoint Venture Partners的合伙人Stephan Dolezalek在3月中旬于旧金山举行的VentureOne会议上表示。Dolezalek是在开玩笑，说的是它的持续时间，但不是问题的严重性。

The limited partners don,t want to pay fees on uninvested capital. "You can sit around and get 3 percent management fees on $1 billion , that's $30 million a year," explains Ravi Chiruvolu, a general partner at Palo Alto, California,based Charter Venture Capital. "Partners can pay themselves $3 million each and enjoy healthy outings, trips to Napa and vacations. They can keep doing that for the next five years and then just retire."

相反，一个数字只是退钱。在3月下旬的Bobshel​​l公告中，国家最成功和有影响力的VC公司之一Kleiner Perkins表示，它告诉有限的合作伙伴，他们从其资本承诺的25％释放到其6.3亿美元的第10款资金。几天后，加利福尼亚州Menlo Park，基础的Redpoint Ventures遵循了衣服，称它将减少250亿美元的二氧化碳规模的25％。同时，1月份，Menlo Park的Mohr，Davidow Ventures将其最新基金的大小削减了23％，并在马萨诸塞州的Charles River Ventures举行了类似的举动。

Slicing management fees is another alternative. Palo Alto,s ComVentures, which has $550 million under management, decided late last year to trim its fee from 2.5 percent to 2.0 percent. Of course, lower fees mean costs have to be taken out elsewhere. Blueprint Ventures of San Francisco and the West Coast office of Charles River Ventures have said they are laying off partners.

这些是风险资本家的艰难决策，但响应可能会有更多的可怕后果。纽约二月千年合作伙伴，对IT意见的意见是无标记的管理费用，推出了一项代理战斗和联邦诉讼，涉及旧金山迈克斯，加利福尼亚州红木市附属公司的311百万美元的基金持续管理费用过度管理费用Fisher jurvetson（见下面的故事）。

Among these alternatives, broadening the scope of investments remains a favorite. And it's always possible that the buyout market can accommodate all the deal makers. "This is the best environment in 20 years," says Generation's Hawkins. One reason is that there are many more companies or business units on the market. Generation bought GE Capital IT Solution's Disaster Recovery Services unit in February for under $100 million, which Jennings deems an attractive price for a profitable, growing company. The Canadian outfit rushes computers, servers and other hardware to a site following a disaster, like an earthquake, hurricane or terrorist attack.

Generation's partners claim the two disciplines can coexist , if done properly. An earlier fund of Jennings, bought elevator music icon Muzak in 1992. Utilizing Hawkins, technical expertise, Muzak improved its delivery by using direct broadcast satellites and was able to expand from seven music channels to 60. When the company was sold to Abry Partners in 1999, a $15 million investment was converted to $75 million in cash, plus a residual interest in the still-growing company.

Generation tries to use its technological and start-up know-how in buyouts like Muzak. "From that perspective, it really helps us," says Jennings. "In today's environment technology is affecting every business. And the only way to be aware of it is to be in it , to understand emerging trends of technologies."

反向也是如此。Hawkins能够利用一代人的投资组合公司的人力资源高管的知识来改进Hotjobs.com的网站，其中它有1000万美元的风险投资。他的一些投资有助于转向困难的问题。“我们没有投资一个电子邮件，因为我们已经完成了联合零售集团的收购，”詹宁斯说。URG经营着一款全国出口连锁店为加号女装提供衣物。“我们永远不会让分销渠道工作舒服。”

Even these strong capabilities don,t prevent miscues, however. In 1998 Generation bought a controlling interest in High End Systems, which makes lighting systems used at concerts and theaters. Late last year Generation was forced to write down half of its investment as some of the company's manufacturing and other problems short-circuited promising sales growth.

事实上,即使是经验d buyout firms like Generation can run into unanticipated problems heightens investors, worries about less experienced venture capitalists. "I would be concerned as an LP if all of a sudden a venture firm changed its strategy," says Todd Wagner, who as a limited partner has invested $30 million with Generation. The Internet entrepreneur , who cashed out nearly $1 billion less than a year after the firm he co-founded, Broadcast.com, was sold to Yahoo! for $5.7 billion in stock in July 1999 , sees parallels to his former trade. "This all reminds me of the dot-coms. When start-ups had one business model and could no longer raise money, suddenly they were in a different business. That's almost always doomed to fail. It's like when the investors come in and ask, ,What do you want me to be?,"

To avoid this syndrome a number of VC firms have partnered with buyout practitioners. "Partnering is pretty important," says Dagres of Battery Ventures, which in June 2000 joined forces with New York,based private equity firm Blackstone Group to invest in the London International Financial Futures and Options Exchange; Euronext acquired the exchange last October, tripling Battery,s initial investment of $35 million.

除了Kleiner Perkins，Interparal Capital和Silver Lake Partners的合作之外，Accel Partners和Kohlberg Kravis Roberts＆Co亦已在2000年成立Accel-KKR，从传统的离线公司雕刻互联网业务。其他值得注意的伙伴关系包括1999年Francisco合作伙伴之间的联盟，该伙伴传统上专注于晚期和买断交易，以及风险公司Sequoia Capital，其中两者都是梅洛公园。

但结盟就足够了吗？新一代的合作伙伴表示，利用技能需要团队保持近乎持续的沟通，并在双方都有影响力，以实现协同效应。”约翰和我一天通五次电话，我们在对方的婚礼上都是伴郎，”在纽约工作的詹宁斯在谈到他的旧金山合伙人霍金斯时说你还需要信任来在风险投资和收购世界之间传递知识。其他人面临的挑战是如何让人们聚在一起进行充分的交叉受精。”

风险资本家进入买断坚持认为他们是关于风险的野人。“我们避开了，刚刚坐下来制作买断型投资，因为这是我们可以花费我们十亿美元的唯一方式，”电池的杜格尔说。“电池是不同的，因为它有42人。但是，大多数是我们的同龄人的VC公司都有我们所做的资源。如果您有一个以十亿美元和七个高大的基金，则很难做早期和为买断添加价值。“

Some would say impossible.

货币市场管理的风险投资费用？

续流风险投资投资的时代结束了。最近的诉讼追逐一个锋利的纽约亚翠尔·安翠尔，于一个风险投资美好的旧金山公司的一个单位展示了如何结束。

In the fall of 2000, Robert Knapp, a managing director who oversees asset arbitrage for Millennium Partners, a highly successful $3 billion hedge fund, put about $3 million into MeVC Draper Fisher Jurvetson, a publicly traded closed-end fund that was originally trumpeted as a way to give small investors access to the mostly private world of venture capital investing. Draper Fisher Jurvetson is a veteran Silicon Valley venture capital firm that made its name by investing early in companies like Hotmail.com and Redgate Communications. Knapp's purchase made his firm MeVC,s largest shareholder, with 4 percent of its shares. What attracted him was the $311 million investment vehicle's seemingly cheap valuation: At the time, shares were trading at a 45 percent discount to net asset value, notably wider than Morningstar,s average discount of 10 percent for closed-end funds that prevailed in 2000. "We look for mispriced assets and undervalued companies," says Knapp.

2月千禧年起诉MEVC顾问（基金投资顾问），违反了违反费用的过度费用。千禧表示，MEVC顾问正在像风险投资公司一样赔偿，其费用为2.5％，大致是风险投资的标准，但它的行为更像是货币市场投资者。Knapp表示，2001年财政年度（截至10月份截止日期），共收取73.8万美元的管理费，即使基金资产的60％仍然是现金，而且所做的投资率下降了39％。

Millennium's demands? "We want to see a substantial return of the uninvested cash, a reduction in fees, a change in advisers and a gradual realization of the portfolio," Knapp says.

董事长兼首席执行官约翰•里MeVC德雷伯鱼er Jurvetson, is fighting back. He says that arbitrageurs tend to home in on a large cash position, or a gap between the stock price and NAV, and then try to force a liquidation. "That's what Millennium does," says Grillos. MeVC Advisers, he asserts, is charging exactly what it originally told investors it would and is operating responsibly. "Better investments come later in the investment cycle, and that,s when you need to have a large cash position," he says. Grillos argues that the share discount is natural since it takes at least three years for the value of the investments , which is reflected in the NAV , to begin to be realized. Today MeVC's net assets are worth $228 million, and it trades at a 30.3 percent discount.

Knapp首先于2001年4月举起抱怨，如果基金将其大部分资产保持现金，则向MEVC致以较低的费用。在随后的股东大会上，他建议MEVC使用现金购买回股。Knapp说他被告知他没有了解风险投资投资。10月，在旧金山，他召开并要求访问该公司。该公司拒绝了，解释了这样的会议将违反监管FD。“他们，从不感兴趣的开始和忽视股东的开始，展出了明确的模式，”Knapp说。

Grillos notes that the fund was meant for individual investors , not for aggressive arbitrageurs , and was pitched as an asset to buy and store away for years. "We believe that individual shareholders should have this asset class available to them," he says.

At the same time that it filed the lawsuit, Millennium launched a proxy battle against a change in the fund's management agreement that would allow the board of directors , rather than shareholders , to approve changes in the fee structure. Millennium prevailed; the proposed change was defeated. Knapp hopes the company will now sit down and talk with him. He says it has not. Meanwhile, Grillos says, their lawyers are talking.

克纳普说，其他投资私人股本的公开持有基金，如果无视股东，也将受到类似的审查。私人合伙企业也有许多相同的问题需要解决：是收取较低的费用、坚持基金募集时提出的目标，还是返还资本（故事）。”哥伦比亚商学院（Columbia Business School）企业金融学教授大卫•贝姆（David Beim）表示：“你不能拿别人的资本，让他们表现不佳，指望别人不会跳到你身上。”。私人投资伙伴关系比MeVC有更多的保护，但愤怒的投资者可能会像克纳普一样坚持不懈，詹尼·安德森