PlayBook Sept 2017

Dozens of brick-and-mortar retailers have shuttered stores or entered bankruptcy recently—a trend that strikes close to home for private equity.

In 2015, venture capitalists returned massive sums of capital to their investors, capping off several years of strong growth in distributions. However, that may have represented a high-water mark, with cash flows skewing sharply downward in 2016.

Amazon seems to be on everyone’s minds. No doubt hundreds of pitches to venture firms have been re-worked to answer the question: How will you compete with Amazon?

Since the mega-buyout boom in the years just prior to the Great Recession, the PE cycle has run nearly a full turn. In clear evidence of cyclicality, the massive tally of capital committed in 2007 contributed to a quicker resurgence in activity from the worst of the crisis.

Venture activity has moved well beyond levels reached before the global financial crisis over the past few years. Overall deal count has slipped since the high of 2015, but the industry is still moving through an era of outsized financings and high valuations.

Capitalizing on a booming M&A environment and welcoming public markets, in the first few years of the 2010s PE fund managers returned billions to their investors. After cresting from 2014 to 2015, however, distributions have begun to decline, as PE-backed exit volume diminishes.