VIDEO: Sebastiaan van den Berg of HarbourVest Partners

 

 

"We are now seeing buyout deals in China, India and Southeast Asia and of course in Korea and Japan. In dollar terms, Australia has been relatively consistent over the years, albeit a little bit less in 2013, but as a percentage of Asia it has come down," he said.

This is not necessarily a bad thing, van den Berg explained, because it allows pan-Asian mangers to be more selective and create geographically diversified portfolios. Local GPs may also benefit due to reduced competition from regional players who are increasingly able to look elsewhere for deals.

The fundraising environment for Australia-focused managers have become more challenging in recent years as the superannuation funds either reduce their allocations to the asset class or commit larger amounts to international GPs at the expense of local players. Van den Berg notes this has led to some downward pressure on fund sizes, which again is no bad thing for investors.

However, he feels that talk of Australian LPs pulling back from private equity, while accurate in some respects, is overstated.

"A significant proportion of their private equity exposure had been to Australian PE and what they are doing now is rebalancing so there is less Australia and more international, sometimes keeping the absolute dollar amount the same," van den Berg said.

"We do see super funds that are shrinking their overall alternatives portfolio, but I certainly wouldn't say they are pulling out altogether. There is still demand in Australia for a global private equity investment product."

• Tweet  
• Facebook  
• LinkedIn  
• Google plus  
• Save this article  
• Send to  

• Topics
• LPs
• People
• Australasia
• HarbourVest Partners
• Asia
• Australia
• Avcjtv