Private Equity: Long-awaited Opportunities Have Arrived

Adaptation, market uncertainty, and shifting consumer behaviour are driving corporations and investments firms to evaluate their priorities, strategies and operations. Building products, transportation, food production, real estate, airlines, hospitality, and restaurants to name a few, are sectors particularly susceptible to a prolonged recovery owing to their sensitivity to consumer demand. Struggling to adapt, companies within these sectors have become attractive to private equity firms who see in them the arrival of a long-awaited opportunity to put $276 billion in dry powder to work. And the wait has been long as this amount has risen every year to triple since 2012¹.

Ian Lynch (Chief Commercial Officer at Intertrust) in a recent PEI article indicated three quarters of managers expect an increase in fund terms as they delay divestiture, especially those nearing the end of their investment cycle. General Partner (GP)-led secondaries to