Take My Venture Fund―Please!

摘要

A hundred and forty dealmakers from a dozen cities around the world gathered over dinner at the W Union Square hotel in New York City in March to toast the closing of a $1.8 billion deal. Deutsche Bank had sold its private equity portfolio―all 83 companies―to seven buyers from five countries. The dinner was fittingly modest for the era: chicken, not caviar; California wine, not French. Yet it was the largest, most complex deal ever done in the market for cast-off private-equity partnerships, and it's just the beginning. Over the last five years investors have thrown $882 billion of cash at buyout, venture and so-called mezzanine funds. The market bust has soured much of the private-equity investments so badly that they are beyond any hope of decent returns to the original investors. Many of those investors just want someone to cart the dreck away.