Impact of national debt crisis
First of all, a matter of sector. Mobile, Internet, digital media, digital advertising spending, Big Data, cleantech... many innovative, fast growing, high potential sectors do not and will not suffer economic slowdown in the same manner as purchasing power and traditional market segments are impacted.
Second of all, a matter of geography. Economic research clearly demonstrates that more (national) debt equals less growth. An economic downturn may be more or less porous from certain geographical zone to certain others. Nonetheless, economic downturns are not shared everywhere in the same way. Sweden had in 2009 and 2010 of growth rate beyond 5%, the fastest in Europe. As for Eastern Europe, 2011 and 2012 figures show that the Russian VC market has rapidly and significantly grown both in terms of number of active VCs and the volume of transactions. Due to different macro-economic fondations (less debt, more growth; raw materials) and perspectives, Russian investors with growing financial means should have an interest to develop westwards in the years to come. Asian markets have also had impressive growth rates, seldom well grasped by European companies. Besides, meanwhile the US, Europe and Asia remain the main focus, other regions in Latin America and Africa are thrilling in mobile, e-commerce or many other areas.
 Third of all, an opportunity for investments in Private Equity? In the current macro-economic context, assets would certainly be more safely invested in long term perspectives in "real assets" such as "Private Equity" - referring to fast growing, unlisted, small and medium capitalisations - rather than in "monetary assets" such as public equity (mostly traditional low-growth companies/markets) or bonds, whose value will depreciate if not because of bankruptcies, because of depreciation through inflation.
In addition of being concentrated geographically, today's market of asset management is very concentrated by number of players. Today about 50 asset management companies manage 75% of world's assets and barely a drop of all those trillions are invested in private equity, yet where growth and job creation happen the most...
In their quest to real assets, seeking performance or even refuge, investments in Private Equity should increase especially while investors have got very poor performance on stock markets over the past few years with no reasonable expectation this can change in short term... Investors will not turn themselves only in real assets like raw materials and real estate (especially those with bad experiences in American, English, Irish or Spanish real estate markets!). By a natural market mechanism, investors seeking performance will come back to genuine value creation (rather than mere financial speculations) through innovative, hard working entrepreneurs, the genuine drivers of sound economic growth - private equity. It will naturally profit more to late stage cases than earlier stages/very small caps. The crisis in the Southern part of the Eurozone, while England, Ireland and the US also have serious situations, makes it a good timing to invest in long term real assets. SMEs will gain more interests, so far the monopoly of large market capitalizations. Especially in certain areas, with excellent market timing, and for specific investment opportunities with experienced teams venturing counter-crisis, it will remain minefields of good opportunities out of economic doldrums and an international outlook is becoming more important in that perspective... "A pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity, an optimist sees opportunity in every difficulty" Winston Churchill |
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