Wealth Management
May 30, 2008
What's Building Value in Canada?
Take another look - 114,000 jobs created. No doubt - private equity builds value for Canadians.
Posted by Jeffrey Watson at Loewen & Partners, the Private Equity partner working with integrity for Business Owners and Family Businesses.
Private Equity Growing
Private Equity at 2006 Levels
Posted by Jeff Watson, Loewen & Partners.
Canada's Biggest Private Equity Deal
Posted by Jeffrey Watson, Associate at the private equity firm, Loewen & Partners.
Raising Capital - A Fresh View From Toronto
May 29, 2008
That's some key note speaker at the CVCA Conference
May 28, 2008
Private Equity Fishing for Deals
“And sellers are probably going to take six to nine months before they realize it's not coming back anytime soon, and so they probably will sell,” Rubenstein says. “But, once we're through that, I think we'll see some extraordinary deals and extraordinary returns generated for investors.”
For the time being, deals are much smaller and have less leverage. Private equity is moving overseas. Rubenstein says, “It's clear that some of the greatest growth opportunities for private equity moving forward are in China and India and other so-called emerging markets.” John Loewen says, “We will see more and more firms begin to invest overseas.”
May 25, 2008
Innovate Before You Raise Capital
Want to design the next great service or product? Upgrade your product, but can't decide what to add or change? Add a new feature to your product, but can't decide how to implement it?
Forget focus groups. Forget endless meetings and brainstorming sessions. Throw an ultra-rapid-design party, and do it in a single day. This approach exploits the wisdom-of-crowds through a process of enforced idea diversity and voting, so no consensus, committee, or even agreement is needed. And it's way more fun.
The Innovation Dinner Party takes 9 people, a pile of diverse "inputs", and has each of the 9 people voting on--and pitching--one another person's ideas to continuously reconfigured groups of 3 people, letting the best ideas rise to the top. The process is a little complicated, but it's derived/modified from an existing rapid-prototyping design. The basic idea looks like this, although there are a million ways to modify it:
Pick 9 people, ideally from different parts of your company and including some customers. (If you don't have a company yet, pick 9 friends--preferably those who don't know each other well) Buy/borrow/find at least 20 "input materials" including books, magazines, a short film, graphic novels, etc.
Assign (randomly) at least 2 "inputs" to each person. Do NOT let them choose (it's important they not be allowed to gravitate toward things they're already comfortable with)
2) Idea Generation
3) Round One begins:
At the end of Round One, each person must select their two favorite ideas from each of the other two members of their group. So if Group One had Fred, Mary, and Sue... then Fred must select his two favorite ideas from the four that Mary pitched, and his two favorites that Sue pitched.
4) Round Two begins:
5) Round Three begins:
- Round One: pitch your own four ideas*
- Round Two: pitch four ideas from your Round One group to your new Round Two group -- two ideas from each of your previous group's other members.*
- Round Three: pitch four ideas from your Round Two group to your new Round Three group, as before.
At the end of Round Three, again each person selects their top two favorite ideas from the ones pitched by the other two members. Record these as a vote. You should now have a total of 108 votes. Choose the top 9 vote-getters (you'll have to be creative about tie-breaking... you could choose more than 9, for example). Give each person a copy of the 9 ideas, and send them back for another round of "inputs." Again, assign each person different materials from the ones they used at the beginning. Give the participants 30 minutes to use their inputs and flesh out a single idea from the nine.
Their one idea can be a modified version of one of the nine, based on their "research." Their one idea could be a mashup of two or more of the nine ideas. It cannot, however, be something completely new. Participants should be prepared to explain how something they got from their inputs helped in some way (not an absolute requirement).
Go Ahead and Choose
Now it's up to you what to do with the ideas. You might choose just one, or take all 9 "winners" with their pitches back to another person or group.
May 19, 2008
What is the Future of State Capitalism?
The concern arises as there is the perception that some States do not channel money to their own people’s social welfare.
If the answers to customer concerns can be given easily, then that capital will be willingly accepted. The West is able to think beyond xenophobic attitudes that if money is not money made here, we don’t want it. Remember the Nineties when Japan bought up property?
We do need to look at why so many citizens of some countries with these huge funds are choosing to vote with their feet and leave their home land for the West? This has been developing for decades. Why did these people travel far to North America, Europe and Australia? Being an immigrant myself, I have put this question to other immigrants many times over the years. The answer is the same – my government has leaders enriching themselves rather than taking up the role to help everyone in the nation.
Otherwise, I see business leaders – my clients – embracing seeing other nations rising up, experiencing their own industrial revolutions and going global. "There may not be global rules for State Capitalism yet," adds John Loewen, "but these will come because the customers are asking the questions more and more. The market-human beings- is demanding transparency and states need to show where they spend their money and who benefits from it."
No, it’s not perfect in any country so let’s not be grand standing and silly about who is pure and who is not. The point is we have now arrived at a point in history where every human being on this planet now understands that their State is obliged to look after their people first, before enriching themselves and indulging in their vanity projects. Otherwise, the steady outflow of their best and brightest will continue.
May 18, 2008
Raising Capital for Women
She had a good service and spent the time and money putting together a detailed five year financial model. That preparation when going out to raise capital makes the difference, not your gender.
I guess it is difficult to overcome stereotyping that by simply being female, you are not going to get money or that a female run company is not good for loan or investment repayment. Countries that are having gender roles change, such as Rwanda, are discovering that women are better at business than the men. The Washington Post explains the reasons why empowering women eliminates the cycle of poverty. It’s hard to imagine the lives Rwandan women for example, have lead, hard to relate to a circumstance where you have no rights, no standing, and no physical power to protect yourself. So why now, with just the slightest assistance, are these amazing women beating out their male counterparts in business? Easy - they’re women which seems sexist to say!
Here's an excerpt from the report: Officials at Vision Finance, the microloan arm of World Vision International that launched a program in 2005 in a Rwandian town of 40,000, said that while women make up the majority of borrowers, four out of five defaulters are men.
"They say that women care more about the family, but I do not know if that is true," Mukandayisenga said. "I think it has more to do with the self-control woman show in hard times.”