Insights from the BVCA summit: PE open for business

Investors, LPs and advisers from the likes of Hamilton Lane, Hg, Harbourvest, Permira and Cinven gave their thoughts on a series of panels covering trends in private equity. Topics ranged from the state of the secondaries market, to fund financing, to ESG factors.

On general themes, such as fundraising, market participants were positive about the future of the market. Richard Hope of Hamilton Lane said: "We've seen fundraisings be pushed back by only a few months. The fundraising engine has kept going strongly. For most organised LPs, this has been a pretty busy time for fundraising."

Speaking on virtual fundraising, Jodi Yang of Balderton Capital said: "In terms of comfort in backing existing relationships, there's a nice raw candour that has emerged from these virtual experiences and we think there could be more touch points with LPs for creative managers."

Both fund financing and secondaries professionals spoke about the importance of an expanding toolbox for both secondaries buyers and GPs to generate liquidity in a quickly professionalising industry. Roberto Biondi of Permira said: "The tools we've seen available for fund financing is positive. Anything that's going to be able to create value and a reasonable price of leverage is generally going to be a good thing."

Greg Ciesielski of Harbourvest spoke to the growing sophistication of the secondaries market. "Market players have moved to almost 100% familiarity with us and the tools that we can offer."

When discussing building the private equity firm of the future in a fireside chat, Matthew Brockman of Hg highlighted the importance of a sector focus and an emphasis on longevity in both strategy and choice of LPs: "Software for us was our best sector two decades ago. It has the best returns and the least volatility. The portfolio has been incredibly resilient and through the pandemic we've been somewhat relieved it has played the way it has for our portfolio."

Diversity was also a focus on a number of panels. Commentators agreed that most players were attempting to make strides in this field, but that there is still a long way to go.

Joana Rocha of Neuberger Berman spoke about the steps taken at the firm to improve diversity: "One in four of our investment professionals are women and we've tried to come up with practical measures to increase diversity, including unconscious bias training, steps in recruitment, mentoring programmes and retention measures. We've also shared our learnings with our core GPs, who have frankly reached out and asked for help."

One area that continues to block impact investors and LPs more focused on ESG is reporting standards. While some are battling with the glut of different reporting standards, others are taking a more relaxed approached to ESG. Rocha said: "We track diversity as part of our primary fund diligence process, but we don't have certain KPIs. It's just a tracking exercise because we're strong believers that if you measure, you can drive change. Next time that asset comes to market, we'll be able to see if there was improvement."

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• Topics
• GPs
• LPs
• UK / Ireland
• United Kingdom
• BVCA
• Permira
• Hamilton Lane