The International Finance Corporation (IFC) is an international financial institution that offers investment, advisory, and asset-management services to encourage private-sector development in less developed countries. The IFC is a member of the World Bank Group and is headquartered in Washington, D.C. in the United States.
Private equity (PE) is stock in a private company that does not offer stock to the general public. In the field of finance, private equity is offered instead to specialized investment funds and limited partnerships that take an active role in the management and structuring of the companies. In casual usage, "private equity" can refer to these investment firms, rather than the companies in which they invest.
Venture capital (VC) is a form of private equity financing provided by firms or funds to startup, early-stage, and emerging companies, that have been deemed to have high growth potential or that have demonstrated high growth in terms of number of employees, annual revenue, scale of operations, etc. Venture capital firms or funds invest in these early-stage companies in exchange for equity, or an ownership stake. Venture capitalists take on the risk of financing start-ups in the hopes that some of the companies they support will become successful. Because startups face high uncertainty, VC investments have high rates of failure. Start-ups are usually based on an innovative technology or business model and often come from high technology industries such as information technology (IT) or biotechnology.
Guy Hands is an English financier and investor. He is most notable as the founder and former chairman of Terra Firma Capital Partners, one of the largest private equity firms in Europe. Hands also was chairman of the UK music company EMI.
Blackstone Inc. is an American alternative investment management company based in New York City. It was founded in 1985 as a mergers and acquisitions firm by Peter Peterson and Stephen Schwarzman, who had previously worked together at Lehman Brothers. Blackstone's private equity business has been one of the largest investors in leveraged buyouts in the last three decades, while its real estate business has actively acquired commercial real estate across the globe. Blackstone is also active in credit, infrastructure, hedge funds, secondaries, growth equity, and insurance solutions. As of May 2024, Blackstone has more than US$1 trillion in total assets under management, making it the world's largest alternative investment firm.
Close Brothers Group plc is a UK merchant banking group which provides lending, takes deposits, manages wealth and trades in securities. The company is listed on the London Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the FTSE 250 Index.
CVC Capital Partners plc is a Jersey-based private equity and investment advisory firm with approximately €186 billion of assets under management and approximately €157 billion in secured commitments since inception across American, European, and Asian private equity, secondaries, credit funds and infrastructure. As of 31 December 2021, the funds managed or advised by CVC are invested in more than 100 companies worldwide, employing over 450,000 people in numerous countries. CVC was founded in 1981 and, as of 31 March 2022, has over 850 employees working across its network of 25 offices throughout EMEA, Asia and the Americas.
Carnegie Investment Bank AB is a Swedish financial services group with activities in securities brokerage, investment banking and private banking.
TA Associates Management, L.P. is an American private equity firm and was one of the early modern-era private equity firms in the United States. The firm leads buyouts and minority recapitalizations of profitable growth companies. TA invests across five industry groups: technology, healthcare, consumer products, financial services and business services.
ATON LLC is one of the oldest investment companies in Russia. It was founded in 1991, sold to UniCredit group in 2007 and recreated in 2009. ATON operates in 30 Russian cities. ATON’s headquarter is in Moscow.
In finance, the private-equity secondary market refers to the buying and selling of pre-existing investor commitments to private-equity and other alternative investment funds. Given the absence of established trading markets for these interests, the transfer of interests in private-equity funds as well as hedge funds can be more complex and labor-intensive.
Platinum Equity, LLC is an American private equity investment firm founded by Tom Gores in 1995, headquartered in Beverly Hills, California. The firm focuses on leveraged buyout investments of established companies in the U.S., Europe and Asia.
An alternative investment, also known as an alternative asset or alternative investment fund (AIF), is an investment in any asset class excluding capital stocks, bonds, and cash.
Macquarie Group Limited, more commonly known as Macquarie Bank, is an Australian multinational investment banking and financial services group headquartered in Sydney and listed on the ASX.
An angel investor is an individual who provides capital to a business or businesses, including startups, usually in exchange for convertible debt or ownership equity. Angel investors often provide support to startups at a very early stage, once or in a consecutive manner, and when most investors are not prepared to back them. In a survey of 150 founders conducted by Wilbur Labs, about 70% of entrepreneurs will face potential business failure, and nearly 66% will face this potential failure within 25 months of launching their company. A small but increasing number of angel investors invest online through equity crowdfunding or organize themselves into angel groups or angel networks to share investment capital and provide advice to their portfolio companies. The number of angel investors has greatly increased since the mid-20th century.
Vittra Utbildning AB is a Swedish education company that operates schools. The company runs 27 schools in Sweden and other schools in Norway, Denmark, Latvia, and Estonia. In Stockholm, the company owns the largest independent school in Sweden. The children have individual curricula designed for their needs and skills.
The history of private equity, venture capital, and the development of these asset classes has occurred through a series of boom-and-bust cycles since the middle of the 20th century. Within the broader private equity industry, two distinct sub-industries, leveraged buyouts and venture capital experienced growth along parallel, although interrelated tracks.
Private equity in the 2000s represents one of the major growth periods in the history of private equity and venture capital. Within the broader private equity industry, two distinct sub-industries, leveraged buyouts and venture capital expanded along parallel and interrelated tracks.
MidOcean Partners is a New York–based alternative asset management firm that specializes in mid-sized private equity and alternative leveraged investments.
UBS Group AG is a multinational investment bank and financial services company founded and based in Switzerland. Headquartered simultaneously in Zürich and Basel, it maintains a presence in all major financial centres as the largest Swiss banking institution and the largest private bank in the world. UBS investment bankers and private bankers are known for their strict bank–client confidentiality and culture of banking secrecy. Because of the bank's large positions in the Americas, EMEA and Asia Pacific markets, the Financial Stability Board considers it a global systemically important bank.
