It is good to be back

Reading through the pages of this blog over 5 years later has been an interesting experience. There was probably a little more truth in the ever increasing, never changing comment in 2006 than I realised. I feel like a lot has changed, but many of the comments from 2006 still strike me now.

A brief catch-up of 5 years in private equity

Back in 2006 I was lucky enough to be training as a management consultant with an excellent set of managers and partners who tutored me.

In the five years since then I have learned a lot through the excellent people I worked along side at two leading Private Equity firms: one leading British company investing in medium-sized companies across the world; the other a leading American firm who typically buy very big companies through leveraged buyouts.

Private equity can be very complicated

Private equity deals are logistically complicated. One typically involves a very large number of people, a lot of thinking carefully, analysing complex data and trying to make sure that you have really thought of everything that will be needed to help the company grow and become an even bigger success. All of this is done under a lot of time pressure (a few weeks of real information access to buy a company worth several billion pounds / dollars).

But as you meet people of all walks of life, some billionaires, others with much less, the similarities strike you much more than the differences....

... and the things which matter are often very simple