Everything About Private Equity Reeks of Bubble. Party On!

克里斯托弗Zook记得阿拉莫。他在2014年在谈话中出现了美国养老基金的关注点，他在那里吃了晚餐。Halwowed地面上没有餐厅，德州人在1830年代争取独立，但私募股权公司正在举办投资者的迎员愿意的活动，召回Caz Investments的创始人，休斯顿的多型办公室负责监督10亿美元在资产。

As the wine poured, pension managers discussed the challenges they faced allocating to private equity, he says. They had received large distributions from the industry as the funds in which they had invested exited their deals at a profit, and now had larger portions of their pension portfolios dedicated to the asset class. It was overwhelming.

“他们立刻得到了回报，”Zook说。“他们回来的钱比他们花费它更快。”

凭借数十亿美元来工作，他们致力于每辆私募股权经理筹集数亿，促进跨越策略的更大资金，如买断，增长和风险投资。选择巨大的检查是选择的艰巨任务，比如200个资金，其中每人5000万美元。养老基金经理人认为，只要他们有助于大，成功的买断资金，如果繁荣时期突然萧条，他们就会保持其工作，重新询问Zook。

And why not? After all, private equity has performed well, with the industry’s double-digit returns standing out in an era of low interest rates begun after the 2008 financial crisis. But the record fundraising that naturally followed has pushed the industry’s dry powder to more than $1 trillion — the most ever — while buyout valuations have risen to worrying levels amid the increased competition for deals.

“这是可怕的，”Torreycove Capital Partners的总裁兼首席执行官David Fann表示，这是一家圣地亚哥的公司，建议私募股权，私人信贷和现实资产的机构投资者提供建议。亚博赞助欧冠“有很多风险。这是一个奇怪的环境。“

虽然私募股权仍然受投资者的欢迎，但由于经济延伸到其第九年的扩张，因此有理由保持谨慎。Fann表示，他最近在中西部的投资银行家听到了“蹩脚的小公司”的投资银行家正在售出12倍的现金流量，当时他们应该七次重视。过去融资这些交易的债务可能会在道路上拼写麻烦。

“利率上升可能是一个问题，”曼德说。较高的利息支付可以随着时间的推移进入现金流量，导致公司估值的大幅下降。他解释说，公司不需要通过私募股权公司收购的收购，以转向投资者的赔偿交易。“除非你急剧改善这些公司的行动，否则你可以看出大量损失，”他说。

Yet these concerns haven’t stopped private equity firms from racing to investors for more capital — indeed, the very recognition that bull markets don’t last forever may be fueling a rush to raise money.

需求是全球性的。UBS的私人资金集团帮助经理从机构投资者吸引资本，从亚洲的流入该行业的情况下看到更多的资金流入。亚博赞助欧冠

“我们继续非常忙碌，”瑞士银行私人资金集团的全球负责人Kevin Kuryla说。“2008年出来的一个经验教训是在投资者基础上具有真正的多样化，而不仅仅是由有限的合作伙伴类型，而且通过地理位置。”十年前，他估计大约三分之二的资本进入私募股权的资本是来自北美的，余额很大地源于欧洲和中东。现在，Kuryla在北美和世界其他地区之间看到了更均匀的分歧。

“我们看到了韩国和中国的更重要的资本，”他说。他补充说，日本也变得更加活跃，而澳大利亚的退休金基金仍然是私募股权的稳定投资者。

TorreyCove’s Fann points to a rise in sovereign wealth funds moving into the industry, including Japan’s Government Pension Investment Fund and Japan Post Bank. “And then there are more Middle Eastern pools of capital,” he says. “The Saudis have become more aggressive in investing in private equity.”

Private equity firms are also raising more capital from the wealth management industry, where financial advisers are introducing their affluent clients to feeder funds that pool assets of high-net-worth individuals to invest in funds run by firms such as Blackstone Group and KKR & Co., according to Fann.

“It’s a very, very crowded fundraising environment right now,” says Kuryla. “A number of funds are coming back sooner because they want to hit the market — before the perceived window closes.”

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私募股权capital-raising bonanza has at least one clear implication: inflated prices.

Buyout multiples last year climbed to a record 10.2 times earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence. This year they remained elevated at an average of 9.5 times ebitda through May, a level surpassing the 2007 peak of the precrisis buyout boom.

The trend has the attention of the investors in their funds.

“有限的合作伙伴担心，但他们仍在投资资产课程，”Kuryla说。“他们认识到市场时机很困难，而且它们会更好地随着时间的推移而投入。”

CAZ, which made a huge profit shorting subprime mortgages with John Paulson before the housing bubble burst in 2008, is generally steering toward middle-market private equity firms, according to Zook, who sees them relying less on leverage to produce bigger returns. CAZ will consider investing in big buyout funds, but Zook says there’s a way to share in their success without paying a premium in fees: buying pieces of the asset managers themselves.

他希望通过投资义迈克尔·贝尔曼管理的资金，以义伯格·贝尔曼单位投资，为Vista Equity伙伴等大型公司寻求接触，这些资金在替代资产管理人员中购买少数民族赌注。CAZ是私募股权公司的少数民族所有者，在管理费用和所谓的持续利息中，他们的多摩利股份股票或从成功交易中的利润削减。

Vista,私人股本公司专注于技术investments, is now raising its largest buyout fund ever, targeting $12 billion, according to Preqin, a provider of alternative-assets data. If successful, Vista’s Fund VII will be twice the size of the $5.8 billion Fund V that the firm closed in 2014. A spokesman for Vista declined to comment.

基金会更大，可以在管理费中收集的越多。

“当资金为1亿美元时，这个行业的定价是创建的，”新成立私募股权公司平等资产管理的创始人兼首席执行官Thomas Roberts表示。“现在，对于很多公司来说，他们在100亿美元到200亿美元的资产之间，而且价格只有一点。”

Roberts, who worked at private equity firm Summit Partners for 28 years, expects Equality will begin seeking capital from investors after Labor Day. The Boston-based firm, which focuses on health care and technology deals, will offer a new type of fee structure, he says.

To stay competitive, Roberts believes private equity firms will need to lower their fees, build more concentrated portfolios with high-conviction bets, and hold their investments longer. He expects to remain invested in deals for eight to 12 years, instead of the typical three- to five-year period — but declined to elaborate on Equality’s fee structure before it begins raising its first fund.

William Riddle, managing director and head of Lazard’s private capital advisory business, says his group is working with first-time fund managers who have left large, global private equity firms to run their own show. Some of these managers prefer working on smaller deals because they believe they can add more value by leveraging their experience from larger firms to help build businesses in the middle market, he says.

“有些人认为有更多机会在市场的较小结束时产生强大的回报，”他补充说，“公司拉萨德建议越来越多的资产越来越多的资产范围，尽管有些人超过50亿美元。

Institutional investors are generally seeking net returns in the mid- to high teens from private equity, according to Riddle. And they’re putting more capital to work with fewer managers, narrowing the number of relationships to focus on the firms that have delivered the best performance, he says.

换句话说，他们随着牛市的年龄而言，他们更加明智，预计在买断行业中震撼。

“这一观点是，他们将继续产生比他们在公共市场所处的更高的回报 - 或者至少他们会越来越擅长行业的其余部分，”谜语说。

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然而，尽管有问题关于一个泡沫的市场，过去的回报使投资者对私募股权健康的投资者胃口保持健康 - 事实上，投资者被迫对他们的曝光感到创造性。

Private equity funds returned 17.3 percent in the 12 months through June 2017, according to Preqin. That compares with 13.4 percent annual gains over the three years and 15.4 percent for the five years through last June.

随着Zook的指出，这一成功使投资者受益，同时产生挑战他们收到的庞大的分布。

Private equity firms have returned almost $2 trillion since 2013, with distributions exceeding capital calls for deal-making for at least six straight years, according to a June report from Preqin. The trend became pronounced in 2014, as investors sought to reinvest the gains to maintain their allocations or satisfy their increased exposure to the asset class.

对于美国养老基金 - 多年来一直在努力努力为工人承诺的退休福利的资金 - 私募股权的上诉很清楚。

德克萨斯州雇员退休制度的首席投资官汤姆TULL表示，私募股权是在5月12日至5月的290亿美元养老基金的最佳资产课程。他说，分布一直到来，有一些个人买断交易，提供超过25％的内部返回率。

“The firms that we are working with are very competitive,” he says. “They’re the cream of the crop as far as we’re concerned.”

他说，德克萨斯州计划将其向私募股权的分配增加到10％的私募股权分配到13％。由于积极的市场绩效，养老基金已经在该级别提高了其分配净资产的净资产价值为38亿美元，包括共同投资。

私人股本德州人队17.34%的交付gain during fiscal 2017, and a compound rate of return of 14.85 percent over the five years through August, according to Tull.

“市场的方式运行方式，我们非常幸运，我们已经在私募股权瞄准了我们的目标，”他说。“我们正在寻找更多的次要机会，我们可以卖掉投资组合的部分。”

这意味着养老金愿意卸下其对私募股权公司管理的资金的一些有限合作伙伴兴趣，可能会受益于买家可以支付给他们的溢价。根据其网站上最近的一项市场摘要，在过去一年内，买断基金的股票是克莱尔全球金融服务合作伙伴III的7500万美元承诺。

“股市处于较高水平，”Tull说。“我们幸运的是在与经理在私募股权空间中做了很多好的交易，所以如果我们能够幸运地将我们的一些职位销售到二级市场，我们将为。”

The Texas retirement plan sold about $1 billion of its private equity portfolio several years ago when the fund hit its threshold allocation, he says, profiting as the sales of its limited partner stakes fetched more than 8 percent over their net asset value. “The timing was right,” he says.

The pension is now seeking to work with managers willing to give the fund more co-investment opportunities, as well as those that provide more geographic diversification, according to Tull. “We like Asia; we like some of the emerging markets,” he says, adding that in expanding its international exposure, to get a better deal on fees the pension would consider managers who aren’t running “monster funds.”

Private equity firms might offer a discount in fees to early and large investors in a new fund, or they might give them the opportunity to sidestep fees in a co-investment pool offered as a sidecar to the main fund being raised, according to TorreyCove’s Fann.

The industry generally charges fees of 1.5 percent to 2 percent to manage assets and 20 percent for performance, he says. On the performance side, firms collect carried interest, or the cut of profits made from gains on their investments.

Tull太高了。他说，德克萨斯州德克萨斯州的管理费用平均约为1.1％，而其携带利息的成本约为12.4％。“那里有一些资金愿意支付2和20，”他说。“不是。”

美国加州公共雇员退休制度最大的养老金基金正在探索另一个私募股权大道，避免费用：它正在审查明年开始做自己交易的计划。新方案的拨款将在目前的私募股权组合之外，4月底估价约为270亿美元。

The pension announced CalPERS Direct in May, saying it expects to invest as much as $13 billion in private equity annually to achieve a 10 percent allocation. From a performance perspective, it’s easy to see the draw, as private equity has been CalPERS’ highest-returning asset class for the past 20 years, with a 10.6 percent annualized gain.

“It's critical to our success,” CalPERS chief executive officer Marcie Frost said in a statement last month. “But with a $355 billion portfolio, investing in funds within the private equity market isn't enough.”

拥有71％的资产需要支付承诺退休福利的养老金正在瞄准7％的重返期限。为了到达那里，卡波斯需要一个“前瞻性私募股权计划”，她说，这将有助于它符合其回归目标。

If such popularitygives you pause with private equity, you’re not alone.

根据Preqin的说法，2017年全球筹款总额为4530亿美元，以2007年举办的以414亿美元的纪录为准。同时，经理人同时正在竞争投资者的资金。

An unprecedented 2,974 private equity funds last month were seeking a record $945 billion of capital, the data provider said in a report. The intense competition has continued even after the industry’s dry powder — or the uninvested capital committed by investors — rose to a new high of $1.09 trillion in March.

As global investors keep turning to private equity for returns, the heightened competition for deals, and the use of debt to finance them, may bite into — or seriously jeopardize — the gains they’re hoping to reap from the buyout industry.

标准普尔全球市场情报估计，收购债务水平平均约5.7倍EBITDA。从2009年完成的交易的低至3.7倍，而2007年的高峰距离远远超过3.05倍 - 在金融危机之前的收购繁荣的高度。随着遭受许多高度杠杆公司的深度经济衰退，因为他们的收入暴跌。

Seeing the dangers of a ballooning loan market as the economic recovery took hold, bank regulators soon moved to curb excessive risk-taking. The leveraged lending guidelines issued in 2013 by the Federal Reserve, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency said a debt level exceeding six times a company’s ebitda raises concerns.

现在对风险贷款的监管压力似乎很容易。

2月底，约瑟夫·奥尔泰 - 去年由唐纳德特朗普总统任命的OCC主任 - 在拉斯维加斯的会议上表示，根据律师事务所绳索的客户报告，银行不再需要遵守杠杆贷款指导。灰色的。

“Lending to leveraged borrowers must be conducted in a safe and sound manner,” a spokeswoman for the OCC said in an emailed statement. “The guidance remains guidance and does not establish bright lines that represent limits or conditions, nor was it ever intended to do that.”

根据FANN的说法，随着投资者对增加利率和高买出估值的疑虑，高额买断估值是崛起的。他表示，投资者担心与加拿大，中国和墨西哥的贸易战争可能会对私募股权公司的投资组合进行影响。

对于私募股权公司拥有的公司的投资组合来说，这是一瞥可能遍布私募股权公司所拥有的公司，认为美国图标哈利戴维森的立场。

特朗普与欧洲的贸易战争促使薪酬any to disclose last month that it was moving some of its production outside the U.S. to avoid European tariffs imposed on its motorcycles in retaliation for U.S. duties on steel and aluminum. The motorcycle maker said in a regulatory filing that Europe is its second-biggest source of revenue after the U.S., and that passing costs on to customers would be detrimental to its business.

Still, Fann says investors’ concerns about private equity may be viewed as largely an “emotional feeling,” as the U.S. economy is growing with strong corporate earnings and low unemployment. Backing this sentiment, Josh Feinman, chief global economist at DWS, formerly known as Deutsche Asset Management, wrote in a June 19 note that “the economic expansion, already the second longest on record, is showing little sign of wear, underpinned by sound domestic fundamentals, fiscal stimulus, and the lagged effects of easier financial conditions.”

But investors know that markets can change suddenly.

That’s why Zook, chief investment officer at CAZ, is avoiding highly levered deals he’s seen valued at ten times ebitda. “We probably wouldn’t even touch them at eight times,” he says. In his view, the risk just isn’t worth it.

“这是荒谬的，”他说。