Asian PE infrastructure evolves with the industry

For example, I hope that most of you will have read the excellent cover story focused on placement agents in the last issue of AVCJ. For those of us that have been in the Asian private equity business for a long time, it is great to see that the industry is able to support the infrastructure it needs at all levels of fundraising, and that the placement service is now available to GPs of all sizes.

I still remember the time when Merrill Lynch was battling it out with the team at DFJ for Asian placement agent supremacy, while a number of independent firms such as CP Eaton and International Private Equity operated with few competitors. This particular type of service has now become a highly contested space with everybody from indigenous Asian agents to firms that attempt to move the process online trying to link GPs to LPs.

The same has happened with investment banking, due diligence, deal structuring and other advisory services that now come in all shapes and sizes. In the past, such services were a luxury that only larger firms could afford (not much negotiation and structuring was needed for small to mid-size firms taking minority stakes on deals shared by their tycoon friends). Each major investment bank and consulting firm now has a person or team dedicated to Asian private equity. With the ever-increasing complexity of deals and the need to access financing beyond the equity provided by PE investors, both GPs and their portfolio companies have catalyzed the growth of such advisors in recent years.

Another trend that was not easy to imagine was how big private equity secondaries would become in Asia. Few people would have guessed that the business of buying limited partnership interests in Asian funds would have grown to the extent that market specialists such as HarbourVest Partners, Partners Group, Lexington and Paul Capital would set up shop here.

Indeed the above are proof of the reality that Asian private equity has come a long way since AVCJ started covering the industry 25 years ago. Watch this space for more changes as the industry continues to spread its wings.

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• Topics
• Fundraising
• Secondaries
• placement
• Fundraising
• Secondaries