Tech & Evolving World of Alternative Asset Management!

PE Performance on Excel- Rocks You Like a Hurricane! For a Private Equity Fund like any other business Performance Measurement remains the key focal point apart from other important aspects of business like raising the fund, valuations, deal making, compliances etc. It is important for both, the GP’s who would like to choose upon the metric which can project the fund as top quartile and for the LP’s who would like to dig with other metrics to reach to the actual evaluation of their investments and returns, for their investment decisions! The fund performance evaluations hold an equal interest with investment advisers who would be interested in knowing more than just the performance of a particular project but would be interested in comparing these investments with other funds which bring in the complexity as there are challenges like comparing an apple to apple to reach a logical conclusion. The challenges arise due to the size of the different projects being compared, geo...

Valuations - 😟 Had Always Been Worrisome!  O ne of the biggest challenges in Asset Management is to arrive at the fair market price of the portfolio and the assets that are being invested in. This challenge multiplies as the portfolio becomes more illiquid with few reliable sources of valuation data. Some of the biggest fund failures over the last few years like the Third Avenue Asset Management collapse have been attributed to badly mispriced securities.  In the aftermath of 2008 financial crisis Valuations of securities at Funds has been in focus with investors and regulators. Investor due diligence increasingly focuses on valuation policies, processes and models. Regulators across the globe have focussed on Valuation processes and increased their oversight of how assets are being valued. A big learning from the 2008 financial crisis was how lax some of the valuation processes had been with even the larger banks which created knock-on effects up and down...

Deals Getting Complex! The CEO of Blackrock - one of the world’s money manager, Larry Fink had once said  “Using technology is critical, It’s critical for us as investors, as we’re spending more time analyzing new sources of data, spending more time creating algorithms on the new sources of data. And we’re using technology to be more connected with our clients to help with financial literacy, to help all our clients navigate all our clients’ money.” The best Fund Managers including those at Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan or Blackrock are making outsized bets on technology to manage the business of investment. As Fink goes on to say “Technology will change the entire eco-system.” Technology has traditionally been deployed to reduce Operational Costs and get better access to data. But increasingly it is being used to manage the entire process of Investment Management. Fund Managers are increasingly developing sophisticated tools and techniques to manage the front end of th...

Redefine Alternative Asset Management The key pillars on which this business is built are (a) Investors, (b) Deals & (c) Effective Fund management over the life of the fund. The expertise of the Alternative asset managers lies in managing these three fundamental constituents of the business and his success depends on how well he copes and competes to get these key drivers of the business right. He weaves all his strategies and the various functions around these three fundamental pillars. This central theme and these fundamental drivers are the fuel for any alternative asset manager’s growth engine in his business! Easily the most important aspect of the business is to have the right long term investors who believe in your business. For early stage managers it is often difficult to establish trust with Investors.   Fund allocators across the globe have shown lesser confidence in the alternative asset class and even less so with a new alt asset manager. Som...

Data is the New Oil “Data is the New Oil” . Oil Powered Industrial revolution, transformed our lives adding a new dimension to the way we live in today’s world  Data is poised to power Information revolution and we are witnessing another transformation adding again a new dimension to humanity, redefining the way we are making decisions and the way we would make decisions in the times to come. Sounds good and fancy too! But how does it really relate to me as an alternative asset manager? The question is very pertinent and calls for a deliberation. Today data is produced at a feverish pace at an exponential rate of 4400% of what was being produced a decade back. This rate of rate of producing data too is growing exponentially and we would witness unimaginable amounts of data that is going to be produced. What we process today? Less than 3% of the total produced data!! This is huge gap and points to a big opportunity, just imagine if we could optimize the data capture and ...

As the alternative assets gather critical mass and readies to explode the Private Equity firms are into a phase of transformation. External factors are creating more competitive deal environment challenging & crumbling the traditional models of investment sourcing and execution. Internally it amounts to increased pressures & responsibilities on the GP’s of reporting more information and more often to the LP’s who are becoming more and more demanding on information sharing. Today the funds have become more complex and the LP’s are now seeing themselves in a greater role of involvement in the business and demand transparencies of much higher levels, asking for more live relevant data on demand and in time. Not to forget that data has a shelf life and its relevance short lived. There are reasons to this behavioral  transformation of LPs. Today investor can be LP in the fund & can also be co-investing into the asset along with the GPs directly, the line...