Baring Private Equity Asia is passing up on as much as $6 billion of deals as it awaits a further decline in valuations amid an outlook for a possible global recession, in a sign that this year’s slowdown in private-equity transactions may have further to run.
“There’s no shortage of investment opportunities, the issue is really about finding the right price level that we’re comfortable with,” Chief Executive Officer Jean Eric Salata, who oversees $22 billion of client assets, said in an interview. “At the moment, you have to build in quite a bit of margin of safety into those assumptions to reflect this uncertain outlook” over the next one to three years, he said.
BPEA closed its VIII Asia fund last week and was able to hit the upper limit of $11.2 billion after focusing on returning cash to investors from selling $9 billion of assets in 27 transactions over the past year, Salata said. Its predecessor fund is generating a net mid-30% return, making it one of the best performing funds in more than a decade.
Read more: BNN Bloomberg
