British Private Equity & Venture Capital Association, BVCA, organized Private Equity and Venture Capital in Asia event in London. Grow VC Group and Crowd Valley Inc. participated in the event. The event offered insight and expert discussion on Asian private equity and venture capital markets. Asian growth rates continue to outpace Europe and the US, Asia appeals many investors, but also many investors see growing uncertainty.
You can see photos and slides from the event on Grow VC’s Facebook page.
Some selected observations and quotes from the discussions:
- “Only a few significant funds in Asia, it is difficult to evaluate performance and risk.”
- “In Asia many investors have preferred direct investments to have more control.”
- “A lot of family controlled businesses.”
- “Opportunities for new funds and model.”
- “Syndication doesn’t work so well yet.”
- “Currencies have influence on the market, invest in one currency and get return in another currency, and means additional component to evaluate.”
- “It is not hard to find top level venture capital deals outside the US, but it is hard to exit them.”
- “US and Europe can have more instability in tax policies than Asia.”
- “South East Asia can start to compete more with China or India.”
- “Next interesting countries in IPR investments after Korea, are Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia.”
- “In Japan there is especially market opportunity for $15-100 Million investments.”
- “Co-investing models are raising in Asia too.”
- “Two trends in fund raising: some funds are raised in less than 5 months, and some takes over 18m, but not so much between those.”
- “Many funds avoid Europe in fund raising, when US LP’s have deeper pockets and Europe is more fragmented market.”
- “Some investors follow too much trends when PE investing perspective is 10 to 20 years.”
- “Some LP’s have had unrealistic expectations from Asia.”
- “Manager selection is a key for a fund, more important than macro economics.”
- “Invest in German machinery industry that benefits hugely from emerging markets is a safer way to invest in emerging markets than funds.”
- “In 30 year China is as large PE market as US.”
- “Asia is doing well, but it could potential to much more.”
All these are comments we got from panels, presentations and discussions. Generally investors see a lot of opportunities in Asia, they see it is the key market in a longer run, but at the moment there are also many questions marks due political issues, growth the in the US market, and short term uncertainty. See more from our Facebook page.
