Insight Private Equity on the black box of restructuring tools private equity investors use to improve the operational performance of their portfolio companies

July 12, 2013 Leave a comment

Insight Private Equity

Andrej Gill Goethe University Frankfurt – Faculty of Economics and Business Administration

Nikolai Visnjic Goethe University Frankfurt

June 18, 2013
SAFE Working Paper No. 23

Abstract: 
We are able to shed light on the black box of restructuring tools private equity investors use to improve the operational performance of their portfolio companies. By building on previous work considering performance evaluation of PE backed companies, we analyze whether private equity improves operating efficiency and which of the typical restructuring tools are the main performance drivers. Using a set of over 300 international leveraged buyout transactions of the last thirty years, we find that while there is vast improvement in operational efficiency, these gains vary considerably. Our top performing transactions are subject to strong equity incentives, frequent asset restructuring and tight control by the investor. Furthermore, investors’ experience has a positive influence while financial leverage has no influence on operational performance.

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Unknown's avatarAbout bambooinnovator
Kee Koon Boon (“KB”) is the co-founder and director of HERO Investment Management which provides specialized fund management and investment advisory services to the ARCHEA Asia HERO Innovators Fund (www.heroinnovator.com), the only Asian SMID-cap tech-focused fund in the industry. KB is an internationally featured investor rooted in the principles of value investing for over a decade as a fund manager and analyst in the Asian capital markets who started his career at a boutique hedge fund in Singapore where he was with the firm since 2002 and was also part of the core investment committee in significantly outperforming the index in the 10-year-plus-old flagship Asian fund. He was also the portfolio manager for Asia-Pacific equities at Korea’s largest mutual fund company. Prior to setting up the H.E.R.O. Innovators Fund, KB was the Chief Investment Officer & CEO of a Singapore Registered Fund Management Company (RFMC) where he is responsible for listed Asian equity investments. KB had taught accounting at the Singapore Management University (SMU) as a faculty member and also pioneered the 15-week course on Accounting Fraud in Asia as an official module at SMU. KB remains grateful and honored to be invited by Singapore’s financial regulator Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to present to their top management team about implementing a world’s first fact-based forward-looking fraud detection framework to bring about benefits for the capital markets in Singapore and for the public and investment community. KB also served the community in sharing his insights in writing articles about value investing and corporate governance in the media that include Business Times, Straits Times, Jakarta Post, Manual of Ideas, Investopedia, TedXWallStreet. He had also presented in top investment, banking and finance conferences in America, Italy, Sydney, Cape Town, HK, China. He has trained CEOs, entrepreneurs, CFOs, management executives in business strategy & business model innovation in Singapore, HK and China.

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