UK - BVCA publishes economic impact study

A panel convened to discuss the results, which included BVCA chief executive Simon Walker and Robert Easton, managing director at Carlyle, robustly defended the role played by private equity. However, there was an acknowledgement from Easton that large buyout houses are having a difficult time accessing debt to fund deals and are having to rely on non-traditional, local bank lenders. Easton said that Carlyle’s recent sale of Firth Rixson to Oak Hill Capital Partners required Carlyle to put together a consortium of three local banks from Germany, Spain and Japan in order to facilitate the deal.

There was some talk about the government’s recent plan to tax non-domiciled individuals and how this could affect the private equity industry in the UK. Michael Snyder, chairman of the policy and resources committee at the City of London Corporation claimed that a number of private equity firms are considering relocation away from London should the government press ahead with its non-dom tax plans. ‘Speaking to lawyers in Geneva, they are rubbing their hands at the amount of work they have had from private equity executives thinking about relocating to Switzerland.’ He also said that they are currently preparing a report on the issue which has found that in some buyout houses as many as 90% of employees are non-domiciled for tax purposes.

• Tweet  
• Facebook  
• LinkedIn  
• Google plus  
• Send to  

• Topics
• Industry
• UK / Ireland