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Jan 17, 2025 | 
ionanalytics.com | Justin Niessner |Edith Leung
Tommy Yip, founder of Unicorn Capital Partners, a venture capital-focused fund-of-funds, described the market as still firmly in a state of dormancy although beginning to provide more inroads for opportunistic investors. For Unicorn, the action has been mostly in secondary transactions, where after two years of stagnation and retrenchment in valuations and capital markets, sellers are starting to agree to more attractive pricing.
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Jan 14, 2025 | 
ionanalytics.com | Justin Niessner |Edith Leung
When Northstar Group sold Indonesian hotel booking services provider MG Group earlier this month, it proved its thesis with an asterisk. The plan was to attract a strategic buyer, anticipating that a global consolidation trend in the hospitality industry would eventually come to Southeast Asia. That indeed happened, but in the end, the asset went to regional GP.
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Nov 26, 2024 | 
ionanalytics.com | Justin Niessner |Keane Hoo
LPs at the AVCJ Private Equity Forum 2024 expressed optimism that exit markets would re-open with the pending change of government in the US, although doubts persist around Asia and liquidity options such as continuation vehicles (CVs). Dana Johns, head of private equity at the State of New Jersey’s Division of Investment, said there was a sense of relief across the industry immediately following the US election.
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Oct 29, 2024 | 
ionanalytics.com | Justin Niessner |Edith Leung
Paul Santos, a co-founder and managing partner of Singapore-based Wavemaker Partners, is taking his firm’s fifth flagship fund to market with a target of USD 150m. The fund is anchored by returning investor International Finance Corporation (IFC). Q: What’s your view on the state of the Southeast Asia start-up space? A: When interest rates went up, the venture tourists had to leave because Southeast Asia is not their core.
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Oct 23, 2024 | 
ionanalytics.com | Justin Niessner |Edith Leung
When the time came to sell Japanese noodle restaurant chain Sukesan, Unison Capital made a list of more than 50 potential buyers, including non-restaurant players. No financial advisor was engaged; instead, Unison independently approached corporates one by one. Tokyo-listed restauranteur Skylark Holdings came out on top, agreeing to buy 100% of Sukesan for JPY 24bn (USD 160m).
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Oct 23, 2024 | 
ionanalytics.com | Justin Niessner |Edith Leung
The balance of art and science in private markets valuation assessments appears to be tilting toward art as uncertainty variables proliferate and quantitative inputs become sparser. At the highest level, the trend can be attributed to a general sense of late-cycle dislocation, which has translated into greater anxiety about the true valuation of an asset and the ability to discern those numbers in a stagnant market.
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Oct 8, 2024 | 
ionanalytics.com | Justin Niessner |Edith Leung
To some extent, the difficult fundraising environment of the past 18 months has propelled the adoption of gender-lens investment strategies in private equity. As LPs have gained negotiating leverage, they have been able to impose more requirements around gender globally – and Asia has some of the most catching up to do. “In the last few years in Asia, we’ve seen LPs request, and some demand, more diversity on the boards of GPs – and this has been successful.
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Sep 24, 2024 | 
ionanalytics.com | Justin Niessner |Edith Leung
News (Intelligence) As family offices multiply, PE investment increases, but numbers are deceptiveMost families mimic global institutional strategies favouring Western marketsAsian GPs will leverage the wave where families pursue contrarian strategiesThe first rule of analysing the behaviour of family offices is to acknowledge that all family offices are unique. So, when they appear to be moving en masse, two questions must be asked.
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Sep 11, 2024 | 
ionanalytics.com | Justin Niessner |Keane Hoo
Trade and sponsor sales dominate deal flow as IPO channel remains negligibleM&A outlook improving as valuation gap narrows, deal financing terms normaliseStrategic appetite tilts on a cocktail of size, industry, and performance variablesMorgan Stanley Private Equity Asia’s(MSPEA) confidence in the South Korean exit market is easily understood in raw numbers. Its funds have delivered distributions to paid-in (DPI) of 1.5x in total since the firm’s inception in 1993.
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Sep 3, 2024 | 
ionanalytics.com | Justin Niessner |Edith Leung
Lagging returns in India could result in serious consolidation of the GP space Digital consumerism is the exception in venture, producing outstanding returns Family offices must be careful to avoid emotion-led direct investment strategies As global LPs, once burned by India, flirt with re-entering the market, as local managers raise ever larger funds, as domestic capital discovers private equity, and as the IPO market remains robust, there is renewed confidence in an expansion of the...
