Private Equity: Up, Up and Away

Job losses in the United States are the early cough of the venerable cold Canada will catch soon enough.  Unemployment statistics out of the U.S. released last weak showed jobs are being shed across the whole economy and at a faster rate than expected.  Big, infectious coughs, blowing up over the Adirondacks and into our backdoor. 

Though many fund managers will tell you that they have barrels of "dry powder" stowed away in their coffers (aka, cash ready to invest), the reality is that the powder is being preserved for a much larger offensive likely to begin during the typical (military) campaigning season, beginning in the Spring.  In the same breathe, they will explain that the deal flow they are seeing right now is actually greater than it was a year ago, but the caveat is that the quality of the deals are not as good.  

There are a few reasons for the increased deal flow.  Private equity's growth in the new millennium, largely due to increased private savings of a wealthy middle class, began to pique the interest of newsmen and women the world over, but it's popularity struck most significantly in 2007 with the advent of the blockbuster deals.  Beginning in the summer of 2007, just after the green movement fell out of vogue and before the sub-prime crisis began spilling ink, private equity was all the rage in newspapers across the continent and in Europe. Blockbuster deals like the buyouts of BCE, TXU Energy, and Chrysler splashed across the front pages of newspapers across the globe; the private lives of fund managers were being written about, from their their cop orate jets flying all across the world, to lobster dinners on Fifth Avenue.

So with lower quality deals blowing in the door, fund managers have grown more discriminating in regard to what they would deploy their 'dry powder' into.  This is leading to a great many "orphaned deals" disseminating throughout the market.  Generally speaking, the public market is trading shares at half their value from a year ago and a fund manager won't invest into a private company at a greater price than he can invest in a comparable public company, which means that the value of private companies are being depressed at this time as well.  At first light of market stabilization, the dry powder will begin to be deployed at an incredible rate, as funds compete to snatch up companies still trading at relatively low multiples, getting more equity for their investment dollar.    

Though the Canadian economy will inevitably be pulled along with the current global problems, look for activity in the private equity market to signal a recovery.  Fund managers are intelligent and have the flexibility to creatively carve out the returns they crave, but they are not superheroes, and will wait until the volatility gives some indication of subsiding.

 

Tough Times

Who's next?
Sure, it's tough times out there and the banks are not helping.
Currently the government is reaching out to the business community to find out if the banks are lending as they are claiming. I was contacted by the Canadian Venture Capital Association (CVCA) to add in our experiences over the past few months as Loewen & Partners places deals.
The banks are stuck between a rock and a hard place. This is not a sub prime crisis – it’s now a credit crisis.
Apparently, the banks are showing the government figures and reports that they are lending - they even had an 11% growth in lending this last month.
When you dig a bit deeper though, and ask if this is new lending or established lines of credit being drawn, the real picture emerges.
Business owners who are established clients are pulling down their lines of credit and tucking it under the mattress. That is not new lending on the books.
Loewen & Partners met with RBC this week and it was refreshing. RBC is doing something counter intuitive to all the other banks. They told us, "We want to lend." They say they are open for business.
As one of the account managers told me, “People remember how you treat them in the tough times.” RBC will probably scoop up some clients for life in this next year with this strategy and it will build a rock solid brand, one customer at a time. Smart work, RBC.

Hand-Written Notes Improve Your Brand

There is a great deal to be said for the hand-written note. The habit of actually picking up a pen and writing a quick comment to someone has faded away as emails and cell phones grew in use. A thank you note, even with scratchy hand writing, still brands the writer as someone with style; a note packs a wallop and makes your message stand out from the crowd.
I received a hand written note penned by one of Loewen & Partners’ clients thanking me for getting their company into the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year awards.
The company owner, Patrick Bermingham, wrote that he was amazed to win in his category, manufacturing. His company, Bermingham Construction, has received a great deal of recognition since, he tells me, from clients and that the award was also a huge moral boast for his employees.
Bermingham recently decided to move his company up a notch and with Loewen & Partners' corporate finance assistance, bring in private equity partners, C. A. Bancorp. This has not been easy sailing to get employees to buy in or even the owner, Patrick Bermingham. To win an award as prestigious as Entrepreneur of the Year helps ease the situation and reminds everyone that the business is doing very, very well. But it does take work for which Loewen & Partners did not get paid to do.
So will I do something extra that I do not get paid for again for Patrick?
Absolutely.

Live Long and Prosper

Need to be revved up and pushed back out into the market place? Here’s a great place to go and get inspired. It’s Rick Spence’s video series on how to get your business started but it applies also as a quick reminder for those who have been working at it for years.
At Loewen & Partners, we are using the marketing plan video as the base for doing our plan for next year.

Dragons Bail on Yet Another Deal

The CBC show, Dragons' Den, is in serious danger of getting the same tarnished image that tinged the British show - the Dragons will not close the deals they agreed to do on national TV. There are all sorts of excuses.
Again, after the Uno letdown, Brett Wilson is left alone holding the bag to finance a great product, Ecotraction, and finally, this is getting noticed by the newspaper journalists. Mary Teresa Bitti, Financial Post writes, "all five (Dragons) agreed to put up a combined $500,000 for a 25% stake." They blame their change of heart on the market collapse.
That's a convenient excuse.
There are two types of investors: those that do it for a living and those who have made it, and invest their own money. The Dragons are supposed to be in the later category. Surely, they can afford $75,000 each on a product with guaranteed sales? Or maybe not?
I have a spread sheet tracking deals declared and deals done. Email me if you want a copy to see how much these Dragons are actually putting into our Canadian entrepreneurs. CBC should be asking Arelene Dickinson and Brett Wilson if they have any buddies who want to be Dragons and kick out the others who don't cough up the dough.