Photo credit: Tormod Sandtorv
I was tidying up the bookshelves this evening and came across a real vintage piece, some serious nostalgia: a 1998 edition of the Australian Venture Capital Guide.
In truth, at least by today's standards, Australian private equity barely existed back then. It's disconcerting to reflect on how much has changed in just 12 quick years. This was before Pacific Equity Partners, before Ironbridge, before Quadrant, and long before global firms like KKR and CVC arrived. This was before Australian law firms had private equity specialists, before the accounting firms had TS divisions, and before any of the local banks had proper financial sponsors teams.
We were still a bunch of learning-on-the-job venture capitalists. Only a handful of firms had actually used debt in a PE deal. Get this: of the 87 firms that claimed to be venture capitalists, only 14 had more than $100m under management . . . and some of them were stretching the truth!
Just five real private equity firms from 1998 are still in business today: Advent, Archer (GS Equity), Catalyst, Equity Partners and CHAMP (Aussie Mezz).
Some of the dead firms live on in teams that went on to build good new firms.
For example, the Quadrant guys came out of Westpac Development, Next out of Macquarie Direct, Starfish out of Nomura and GBS Ventures out of Rothschild.
Posted by: Older than you are! | August 10, 2010 at 10:46 PM
I remember trying to find a lawyer to advise me on a venture capital backed investment back in the late 90s. I think it was 96 or 97.
There was nobody out there. Kon Mellos at Freehills was just about the only guy in Australia who had heard of private equity then.
Posted by: Mick Trefalo | August 10, 2010 at 10:53 PM
In 1998 AMP was probably the most active lender into private equity deals, followed by Westpac. The other banks could barely spell private equity.
Posted by: FB | August 11, 2010 at 04:09 PM
Hi there,
Well I was quite suprised to hear that so many venture cap firms were now gone! In my days with Freehills/ Page and partners there seemed to be a fairly healthy opposition. That said I feel a few of those that have fallen off the cliff, so to speak, have actually amalgamated with others in the hope of rebirth.
Thanks for your enlightening post
regards Jeff
Posted by: Jeff | February 02, 2012 at 11:05 AM