市場(chǎng)洞察報(bào)告：在私募股權(quán)市場(chǎng)尋找價(jià)值

1、TMF MARKET INSIGHT Contents03ESG reportingWhen it comes to ESG reporting, we shouldnt let pretty good be the enemy of perfect06The role of technologyHas technology helped managers to remain operationally robust?09Finding value in Latin AmericaBrazil provides PE investors with a real route to LatAm o

2、pportunities12Finding value in Asia PacificAnalysing where investors look for opportunities in the wake of the pandemic15Finding value through innovationDynamic reporting and data visualisation tools are set to improve GP/LP relationships18Finding value in ESGAn APAC perspective21Finding value in EM

3、EACan the European Green Deal unlock opportunities for private equity investors?23Finding value in the GP/LP relationshipMaintaining strong ties has become more important than ever with the current move towards remote workingWE MAKE A COMPLEX WORLD SIMPLETMF Group is the leading provider of administ

4、rative support services, helping clients access some of the worlds most attractive markets no matter how complex swiftly, safely and efficiently.With some 7,800 experts in-house, on the ground in over 80 locations we are the only company worldwide to provide the combination of fiduciary, company sec

5、retarial, accounting and tax and HR and payroll services essential to the success of businesses investing, operating and expanding across multiple jurisdictions.Thats why over 60% of the Fortune Global 500 and FTSE 100, and almost half of the top 300 private equity firms, use us.www.tmf-grFINDING VA

6、LUE IN PE MARKETS | February 2021www.privateequitywire.co.uk | 2TMF MARKET INSIGHT FINDING VALUE IN PE MARKETS | February 2021www.privateequitywire.co.uk | 3n his 2020 letter to CEOs, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink wrote that the investmentrisks presented by climate change “are set to accelerate a signifi

7、cant reallocation ofIcapital, which will in turn have a profound impact on the pricing of risk and assetsaround the world”.ESG risks are now becoming as important to the way managers think about their portfolios as traditional market-related investment risks, prompting many PE firms to consider what

8、 is most important to them, from an ESG perspective, and how best to codify it within their ESG policy.In his letter, Fink goes on to say that resilient and well-constructed portfolios are essential to achieving long-term investment goals: “Our investment conviction is that sus- tainability-integrat

9、ed portfolios can provide better risk-adjusted returns to investors. And with the impact of sustainability on investment returns increasing, we believe that sustain- able investment will be a critical foundation for client portfolios going forward,” he wrote.It is hard to disagree with the fact that

10、 today, ESG factors represent a secular trend that is only going to continue to evolve over the next decade. In times past, there have been various moments of interest, in an investing context, such as portable alpha and 130/30 strategies, which became all the rage among investors, only to then fizz

11、le out.But ESG investing, and the myriad implications associated with it, is no fad. This is now a bona fide core element of how institutional allocators assess private market managers. “ESG really is the question of the hour,” says Howard Eisen, Head of Fund Services Sales for North America, TMF Gr

12、oup. “I would say this feels more durable and more structural and that it is not simply a fad. Rather, it is an ethical and existential issue fora growing number of people.”Major financial institutions like BlackRock are taking a lead on ESG, paying careful atten-tion to how they integrate ESG facto

13、rs into their fund portfolios and focusing intently on ESG. They have to, given that they expect companies they invest with to do the very same thing.ESG reportingWhen it comes to ESG reporting, we shouldnt let pretty good be the enemy of perfectTMF MARKET INSIGHT And whereas in the early days of ES

14、G investing, say 15 years ago, there was a fair degree of scepticism over why fund managers would seek to prioritise sustainability, potentially diluting the financial returns on offer, this mind- set has increasingly faded into the background.“When ESG first came to the forefront, the biggest argum

15、ent against it was whether the components of ESG were compatible with return expectations sought out by investors. There were many people who did not see the consistency and that if you put ESG factors ahead of fundamental factors when investing, you would reduce returns. How could you elevate virtu

16、e over profit and have that be commercially viable?“The world is now broad and diverse enough such that there are opportunities to make money if you keep ESG factors high, if not at the top, of ones list of priorities,” says Eisen.One of the unique challenges, however, is that while there is a surfe

17、it of information in the public markets, with technology providers able to create a consistent frame- work to rank ESG factors, there is no uniform way of gathering and reporting ESG data within private markets. Nobody yet agrees on what is the right set of ESG fac- tors and even if they did, there

18、is still no consistent way toefficiently gather, rate and rank ESG information.“Both on the GP side and the allocator side there is a continuing and steepening slope of attention and resources being applied to ESG. People are attempting to engineer solutions so that a PE or VC manager might be able

19、to gather and apply ESG data in a consistent manner across their portfolio. The best approach is to have an independent body similar to say ILPA rather than a commercially driven organisation, to develop an ESG reporting standard, with input from industry partici- pants,” argues Eisen.Of course, the

20、re are ways for GPs to demonstrate to investors that they are taking ESG risks seriously in theirportfolios, such as by asking companies to adhere to SASB reporting, or by demonstrating to investors which UN Sustainable Development Goals their strategies are aligned with. Indeed, the Task Force on C

21、limate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) is helping to drive adoption of ESG reporting among corporates, both in public and private markets.This is certainly helping to bring ESG transparency to a higher plane, but private markets remain at some distance from arriving at a uniformly agreed-upon E

22、SG reporting standard.As Eisen is quick to point out, this is a fast-evolving concept and the goalposts will inevitably move.“Like so many other things, the best way to tell how this is going to play out is to follow the money. The man- agers are focused on expanding their client base. And if a grow

23、ing amount of money, and a growing number of allocators, are elevating ESG considerations within their investment programmes, there is no question that the economic incentives to managers mean that they have to commit resources to this.“If you go to the websites of large allocators who really embrac

24、e ESG, such as some of the large university endow- ments and public pension plans, they themselves are fairly vague with respect to this issue of an ESG standard.“It starts at the top of the food chain with national gov- ernments. The Paris Climate Accord is the closest weve come. You have different

25、 regulatory regimes in the EU, the US, Latin America, Asia and if we cant agree on regula- tory issues, which tend to be fairly black and white, how are we going to arrive at a uniformly accepted standard on ESG issues, which are not black and white?“We will make progress but I doubt that we will ev

26、er achieve global harmony on ESG that every country, and every investment firm, accepts. Were going to have to accept the fact that we shouldnt let pretty good be the enemy of perfect,” explains Eisen.ESG really is the question of the hour. I would say this feels more durable and more structural and

27、 that it isnot simply a fad. Rather, it is an ethical and existential issue for a growing number of people.Howard EisenFINDING VALUE IN PE MARKETS | February 2021www.privateequitywire.co.uk | 4TMF MARKET INSIGHT FINDING VALUE IN PE MARKETS | February 2021www.privateequitywire.co.uk | 5TMF Groups glo

28、bal clients have started taking ESG issues more seriously, across all shapes and sizes of manager, according to Eisen. If investors want more ESG transpar- ency, managers have to respond in kind.“Investors want to see these issues advance and if youre an emerging manager in growth mode, or a mid-siz

29、ed manager aspiring to the next level, youre going to want to make sure you can respond to investors needs,” he says.And even though private market managers have to work hard to overcome the issues of how best to gather and rank ESG data in a consistent manner, it is not as if there is a lack of dat

30、a. Indeed, ESG data provided by both public and private companies continues to improve. One of the questions managers need to ask themselves is how best to apply ESG data across their fund portfolios, which might hold a diverse number of assets spanningindustrial, software, healthcare sectors and so

31、 on.“The data is available but it will depend on the following: a) how efficiently it can be extracted; b) what are the standards that you determine to be the most important? andc) how is the data applied consistently to get an ESG ranking that makes sense across the entire portfolio, from Fund I th

32、rough to Fund XX?For managers and allocators alike to make sense of ESG reporting, and to meaning- fully apply benchmarking, it will be necessary to rank different parts of the portfolio, at the individual sector level, using an ESG taxonomy; especially for generalist PE funds. For a specialist heal

33、thcare-focused fund, for example, the same ESG ranking could apply at the wider portfolio level.“For me, it really comes down to addressing the disparate opinions of what is impor- tant under the ESG umbrella, and how to apply ESG rankings to different companies operating across industry sectors,” s

34、tates Eisen.He adds: “You could make a bold statement in your ESG policy that you only invest in companies using supply chains that have no association with human rights abuses. But how does that apply to an advertising agency, for example, where there is no supply chain? “There cant be a one-size-f

35、its-all approach. I think there will need to be a taxonomy that can be applied by GPs in different ways to different companies, based upon sector, productthings like that. But the question will always remain: What is important to you? Is it more important to have gender diversity in senior positions

36、? Is it more important to lower your carbon footprint, or to ensure there are no human rights issues related tocorporate supply chains?”There are so many facets to how managers need to think about ESG factors. But one thing is for sure: this is a trend that shows no sign of stopping. With climate ri

37、sk, diversity and inclusion, and closer scrutiny on supply chains, all coming to the fore in recent times, managers cannot afford to take their eye off this increasingly relevant, secular theme. nTMF MARKET INSIGHT 020 was arguably a defining moment for the pri-vate funds marketplace, as technology

38、or more2broadly, digitalisation helped fund managementgroups maintain business as usual in the face of extraor- dinary circumstances.In the main, firms had already been on the path towards digitalisation to varying degrees, and had the technology in place, prior to Covid-19; but what the pan- demic

39、did do was to accelerate the pace of adoption to support operational activities.“Its really been a case of making sure the infrastructure was there to enable a broader business use of technol- ogy tools such as MS Teams, Slack, etc. Do they have the bandwidth in their infrastructure? This is somethi

40、ng global firms have had to look at over the past 12 months,” com- ments Oliver Sinclair, Funds Services & Capital Markets Application Portfolio Lead at TMF Group.Technology is becoming an adjunct, an enabler to support GPs, as they steadily modernise their operating model. And while it is difficult

41、 to offer broad generalities on the pace of technology adoption, there are a few key areas where technology has made its mark over the last 12 months: 1) Virtual fundraising; 2) Virtual ODD; and 3) Virtual AGMs. The question is, to what extent will these activities remain in the virtual realm. Will

42、they represent long-term change, or a temporary solution?Virtual fundraisingOn the issue of virtual fundraising, which has enabled GPs to better connect with their LPs without the inefficiency ofglobal travel, it has been a game changer. For example, UK-based Tenzing Private Equity, a tech-focused i

43、nvestor, was able to raise GBP400 million in just nine weeks, with- out conducting any face-to-face meetings, as reported by Private Equity International on 7 September 2020.Another example is Waterland Private Equity Investments, who closed Waterland Private Equity Fund VIII with a hard cap of EUR2

44、.5 billion in three months in a fully virtual capacity.This is evidence of video conferencing technology improving productivity levels.“I would say a fund marketer is going to have a much higher success rate with existing investors,” says Howard Eisen, Head of Fund Services Sales for North America,

45、TMF Group. “For new investors, it is hard to establish anything more than introductory relationships, in the vir- tual realm. Theres an old saying that people do business with people they want to do business with. I dont think the virtual environment is the right format to really get to know a new m

46、anager.”He goes on to suggest that a first derivative impact of technology on the current environment is how technologyThe role of technologyHas technology helped managers to remain operationally robust?The amount of security and AI-driven antivirus tools we have to think about is becoming an increa

47、sing chunk of our infrastructure spend as we look to protectour clients data from external threats.Oliver SinclairFINDING VALUE IN PE MARKETS | February 2021www.privateequitywire.co.uk | 6has enabled the flow of documents i.e. the subscrip- tion process, the capital call process and reduced the amou

48、nt of friction, “to allow managers to continue to operate and raise capital in this environment”.Anja Grenner is Head of Fund Services Sales for Luxembourg, TMF Group. The Grand Duchy is a popular fund jurisdiction for many of the worlds leading private equity and real estate groups, as well as an i

49、ncreasing number of new managers. Grenner observes that last year many of the new managers extended their fund launch dates and fundraising activities into Q1 and Q2 2021.“They knew that without making the acquaintance of investors it just wouldnt work,” says Grenner. “ForTMF MARKET INSIGHT establis

50、hed fund managers, weve noticed that investors have tended to stick with them as theyve sought to con- centrate their PE portfolios. What this ultimately means is that the big managers keep on getting bigger and vice- versa. Fundraising as such seemed to be pretty good last year, with managers able

51、to raise higher amounts for their latest funds compared to previous vintages. One can do many more virtual meetings in a day compared to travelling from city to city, so in that respect, technology has certainly made fundraising more efficient. Thats good for the indus- try, as private equity contin

52、ues to mature and industrialise.” As well as improving fundraising speed, established managers have also sought to leverage video technol- ogy to get closer to their portfolio companies, hosting more frequent online meetings with management teams to keep on top of operational issues. According to An

53、ibal Wadih, Founder and Managing Partner of Brazil-based GEF Capital Partners, this has fostered a greater feelingof shared responsibility.“It was a case of saying: Lets focus on the immedi- ate operational issues, and fix them. We organised calls among all of the CFOs of our portfolio companies dur

54、ing the early period of the lockdown to talk and exchange ideas. Then we did the same with the CEOs.” He says that GEF Capital plans to introduce this collective idea- sharing approach on a permanent basis going forward.Virtual ODDMuch like the fundraising process, one might expect vir- tual ODD to

55、have long-term benefits only for those with an established reputation and track record in the indus- try. First time fund managers cant expect prospective investors to get comfortable with their operational and investment processes without meeting in person. There will be limitations to how investor

56、s are able to get under the hood of such managers: investment committees have a fiduciary responsibility after all.An investor needs to know what makes people tick, what their personalities are. They cant achieve that by looking at someone on a computer screen.“With regards to virtual ODD, there is

57、a degree of con- sensus that this is acceptable for managers with whom investors already have longstanding existing relation- ships,” states Eisen. “It only requires doing due diligence on the managers latest fund vehicle, which is far easier to do if theyve already invested in Funds I and II, for e

58、xample. However, it does not prove to be as service- able for new managers, to whom investors have never allocated capital before, and do not have a rapport with.” GCM Grosvenor, the Chicago-based global investment and advisory firm, points out that “many investors fear that without the opportunity

59、to meet a manager face-to- face, watch their body language, assess their culture and tour their offices, the evaluation of that manager may beincomplete, and thus presents risks”.From an efficiency perspective, virtual ODD allows investors to schedule more frequent, focused meetings, not just with a

60、 GPs operations team, but with executives across the organisation. If this is a new manager, initial groundwork can be done virtually, and give investors more time to assess operational processes and controls. The same is also true for PE firms at the pre-investment stage, when analysing the merits