Weekly round-up: Mood swings

European private equity is perhaps the most attractive destination in the world at the moment – or so claimed speakers at last week's EVCA Investor Forum conference in Geneva, attended by unquote's Alice Murray. Carlyle managing director and COO Glenn Youngkin was particularly bullish and likened Europe to a football team staging a spectacular comeback late in the game, after taking something of a battering in the opening half. "Team Europe, in the global private equity world cup, is truly gaining momentum and the squad is looking awfully good for the second half," he said, before adding: "As of today, Europe has more upside than any other region in the world."

Not everyone is smiling in Europe at the moment though, as unquote" explored the impact of the Ukrainian crisis on the local private equity industry. "In the last few weeks, our portfolio has lost 20% of its valuation in dollars," Leslie Hawrylyshyn, co-managing partner at Kiev-based Euroventures Ukraine, told unquote's Amy King. "It's very hard to do international transfers, and credit lines stand at 23-25%. Our portfolio is managing on a cash basis, but that's limited." Despite these difficulties, LPs have remained calm and all eyes are now turned to hopefully brighter long-term prospects.

Careful what you wish for... Although the recent wave of private equity-backed IPOs in the UK has mostly been welcomed with open arms, some mid-market players voiced their concerns at an industry conference hosted by the London Business School, and attended by unquote's Amy King. "The UK IPO market is on course for a bust," said one participant. "These companies, which are sometimes quite small with fairly low profits, are floating at stratospheric prices with owners taking a significant amount of cash off the table. It's a disaster waiting to happen and a lot of investors will lose a fair amount of money."

That's all from me this week but if you have any comments on this week's analysis, please send your thoughts to gregoire.gille@incisivemedia.com.

You can continue to follow me and the rest of the unquote" team via @unquotenews for all the latest private equity and venture capital updates, and of course on unquote.com.

Greg Gille
Acting editor, unquote"

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