Quotes from the AVCJ Investment Summit

Weijian Shan, chairman and CEO of PAG, on China:

"Until recently the market was hot and pre-IPO players looked good, but people are now sitting on portfolio companies that they bought at higher prices than current market valuations."

Joseph Dear, CIO of CalPERS, on the California placement agent scandal:

"Our target return is 7.75%. It's hard to see how stocks and bonds in developed economies are going to achieve that and so it drives investment into alternative vehicles like private equity."

Ben Gray, managing partner and group head of Australia, Japan, Korea and Southeast Asia at TPG Capital, on operational involvement:

"We have ops involvement in 70% of our companies. In the case of Myer [Australian fashion chain] we made 6x our money - 4.5x came from operational involvement , 0.5x from debt payouts and 1x from a good property deal."

K.Y. Tang, chairman and managing partner of Affinity Equity Partners, on trade exits:

"In total, we have made 26 investments and had 19 exits, 16 of which were trade sales. There were less strategic buyers two years ago than there are now and private equity guys find it harder to raise funds but strategics are sitting on balls of cash. I could see every single one of our current portfolio companies doing trade sales."

Thomas Kubr, managing director and CEO of Capital Dynamics, on success in private equity:

"The key to long-term success in private equity is to be boring. Timing doesn't work. If you invest in private equity it will be 3-5 years to get exposure to what you want to do and who can mark out an interesting area 3-5 years in advance? If we were good at that we would all be on the beach."

Henry Kravis, co-founder, co-chairman and co-CEO of KKR, on the Democratic Party's likely response to Bain Capital co-founder Mitt Romney getting the GOP nomination:

"Mitt Romney may become the single source of all US unemployment by the time the election happens."

The Investment Summit forms part of the AVCJ Forum 2011 and Private Equity Week - Asia. It continues Thursday. For more information, please visit http://www.avcjforum.com. You can also follow events as they unfold via Twitter @AVCJ (hashtag #avcj and #avcjforum).

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