Regular marked price: $70.00Discount Price: $44.10
Cost Savings: $25.90 (37%)Price fluctuation possible.
How soon does it ship: Normal ship time within one day
Shipping? Absolutely FREE if you qualify for Super Saver Shipping.
Type of bind: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 332.6
EAN num: 9780470066454
ISBN number: 0470066458
Label: Wiley
Manufacturer: Wiley
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 284
Printing Date: April 16, 2007
Publishing house: Wiley
Sale Popularity Level: 46828
Studio: Wiley
Other books you might be interested in perusing:
Editor's Notes and Comments:
Product Description:
Guy Fraser-Sampson draws upon twenty years' private equity experience to provide a practical guide to mastering the intricacies of this highly specialist asset class. Aimed equally at investors, professionals and business school students, it starts with such fundamental questions as 'what is private equity?' and progresses to detailed analysis of venture and buyout returns. It also unveils a totally new concept which looks set to revolutionise thinking in the industry: Total Return investing.
Often unfairly reviled, and frequently misunderstood, private equity differs from all other asset classes in various important respects, not least in the nature and timing of its returns, which require a whole new approach for those reared on more traditional investments such as bonds and shares. This book shows how a good grasp of the basic structure of private equity vehicles and returns (including the dreaded J-curve) can lead to full understanding of the techniques needed to measure and analyse performance.
Key points include: - A glossary of private equity terms
- Venture funds and transactions
- Buyout funds and transactions
- Understanding private equity returns
- Analysis of historic returns
- How to plan a fund investment programme
- How to conduct effective due diligence
- Total Return investing
User popularity level:
Rated by buyers 
-
This book does a competent job of giving an overview of private equity sufficient for the stated purpose of helping investors understand where it might fit in a portfolio of investments. The book won't prepare you to start your own private equity fund, but it will prepare you to fend-off investment advisors that want to push an unsuitable investment into your portfolio. The writing style is a bit "British" - wordy by American usage standards - but it's their language, isn't it? That being said, the book overall is concise and mercifully short.
Rated by buyers 
-
The author shares many lessons learnt over 20 years in the PE business.
Would be very helpful to many, including PE investors looking to avoid investing in PE funds that will not make them money (most, unfortunately, after fees) and PE funds that make many of the mistakes the author so clearly explains.
Ken Fagan
traducteur private equity
www.privateequitytrad.com
Rated by buyers 
-
First of all, I have to say that I am not a specialist of the Private Equity world, but I read regularly about the topic and I have a strategy and finance background which helps understanding these things. Reading the previous reviews of the book, I wonder if we have read the same book. I was actually excited at the prospect of reading this overview of both the PE and VC worlds in a single volume. But my expectations were diminishing as I was painfully going through the pages, and I finally stopped reading, frustrated and not having learned much, before the end of the PE part of this quite expensive little book. Anyhow, I would like to start with a positive note and say that the book is well organized with clear and logical chapters for both the PE and VC parts. But that's it! My very first frustration was that there was not a single case study to make things a bit more lively, not even a history of key deals, which is a bit strange for such a book and such an industry rich in storied deals and personalities. Also very frustrating is that there is quasi no calculations showing how value is created through deals and various financing structures. It was like an action movie with a lot of talk and no action! Another surprise was the poor treatment on the part dedicated to debt and its use in PE deals: a couple of pages at best. Debt, and the financial engineering that goes with it, is one of the key value levers in PE deals so how can this be almost skipped like that? Apparently the author had previously written a book on PE funds. Beyond the constant "read/refer to my previous book", which was a bit annoying, there was often confusion as to what the author was talking about: funds or deals? The style of the author was also introducing noise in the loop: sometimes very personal ("I" this, "I" that) and sometimes pseudo academic. And even though this was supposed to be an overview, the author repeatedly feels the need to tell everyone his personal point of view over long pages on extremely technical and/or vague aspects of PE (supposedly trying to show some thought leadership) that don't help the reader at all. Other issues in the book include the lack/poor treatement of how PE fits in the economic landscape, or how the fund raising and deal making processes work and who are the various stakeholders. All in all, this book was a disappointing and frustrating experience, which was magnified by its rather expensive cost. Its only advantage is that it has almost no competition in terms of providing an overview of the PE and VC worlds, which is a bit strange for such a talked-about industry.
Rated by buyers -
I was happy to review the author's very first book on investment, having been familiar with his articles for many years, and was looking forward to this one too. I was not disappointed.
Fraser-Sampson is one of the world's leading experts on private equity, and it shows in the sheer quality of this book, page after page. Over twenty years' personal experience are coalesced into a mix of practical hints and technical analysis. Even though it is a subject I thought I knew well, it taught me many things that were completely new to me. I particularly liked the glossary of private equity terms, which explains many arcane phrases in everyday terms but also with welcome touches of humour.
I was surprised to learn that this is the only definitive textbook in the world on this exciting asset class, but a little research on Amazon backs this up. There are casebooks and books on specific aspects of private equity (usually venture capital and/or entrepreneurs raising capital) but nothing which looks at the whole spectrum of the subject from an investor's point of view.
I would imagine this book would be particularly useful to two classes of people. First, business school students and those taking up or seeking entry level positions in buyout or venture capital firms. Second, those looking to raise money for private equity funds, since this book gives a great "view from the other side of the hill" as to what LPs (investors in private equity funds) are looking for.
As with his very first book, it is incredibly well written. He really does have a style all of his own. I would recommend it without doubt.
Rated by buyers -
Guy Fraser-Sampson does an outstanding job in introducing the world of private equity in this book. He starts off defining various concepts in this field, explaining the ways to analyze private equity returns and distinguishing between buyouts and venture capital. He follows with a comprehensive discusion of buyouts (including the various types of buyouts, analysis models, and historical buyout returns) and then an equally thorough investigation of venture capital (with a similar structure to that in the buyouts section). Mr. Fraser-Sampson wraps up with a discusion on due diligence and advice on planning your own investment program in private equity.
I greatly enjoyed the book. It is easy to read, and Mr. Fraser-Sampson presents the concepts in a clear and simple manner - suitable for readers completely new to private equity. I like that the author is unafraid to express his own opinions - whether on the state of transparency in the field, on future buyout returns in Europe, or on usefulness of anti-trust legislation. He furthermore makes sure to separate his thoughts from the pure factual data that he provides to support them.
Interestingly, the book does not simply focus on private equity in one area of the world - the United States. It also covers Europe and sometimes ventures (no pun intended) into other parts of the globe, which I think is a breath of fresh air from the typical finance books that concentrate on US markets only. I am pleased to see this, as I strongly feel that a world-wide outlook is very important in the business world today. And, as Mr. Fraser-Sampson concludes himself, we can learn good lessons by examining the state of the private equity field in various geographic locations: "However, history is cyclical and I now see exactly the same sorts of issues which plagued continental Europe in the past rearing their heads anew in developing private equity areas such as Asia and Latin America. For those in such places who are willing to listen, the European experience has some valuable lessons" (61).
I applaud the author for the amount of historical data present throughout the book - both scattered throughout the text and assembled into tables and diagrams. While most of the data comes from a single source (the VentureXpert system) and the author's own calculations based on that data, it is great to see the general trends in buyout and venture capital returns, fund sizes, etc. I also appreciate that, in a few places, Mr. Fraser-Sampson notes that some of the data may not be very reliable since it is new (which is especially important to the private equity field due to the J-curve phenomenon: fresh data often captures the state of the things on the downward portion of the curve). There is, however, one aspect of history that I would have liked to see represented more. It would have been nice to see several examples of interesting or famous buyouts and venture deals, together with their defining characteristics. While many examples are very briefly touched on, none are really explored in detail. For example, I was pretty surprised that, amidst an extensive description of buyout mechanics, there wasn't any mention of the RJR Nabisco LBO in the late 1980s, to which the author could apply, for instance, his discusion of various levels of debt when dealing with huge transactions.
Some neat small features in this work include concise chapter summaries and a glossary at the end of the book. Little things like that make it easier to reinforce concepts and look them up later. I found the chapter summaries especially helpful - each time I read a chapter summary, I was pleasantly surprised on how concisely and accurately it summed up the important ideas presented earlier. Also useful is the practical advice found in the last two chapters of the book - what a fund or company investor should look for when performing due diligence and how to actually plan your private equity investments program (with an emphasis on the Total Return outlook).
Finally, I'd like to mention something about the author himself. I was confused about one of the diagrams in the book (the one on p. 87, featuring the second scenario in analyzing a buyout return), and I e-mailed Mr. Fraser-Sampson with some questions. He replied almost immediately, clarifying the circumstances around the scenario and thanking me for bringing it to his attention, noting that he will make things more explicit in the subsequent edition (strictly speaking, in the diagram on p. 87, the $20M value under "Yr2" is not a cashflow, since no recapitalization took place - debt was simply reduced without an outflow of equity; this hence technically lowers the shown IRR of 124% to 89%). Not only was Mr. Fraser-Sampson helpful, but he was also just very friendly and approachable. That really tops everything for me... I've e-mailed multiple authors before and have received no responses, yet Mr. Fraser-Sampson ... Read More
Find other books like this one:
