“How to create value when
faced with high valuations.”
INSEAD PE Club (IPEC) 13th Annual Private Equity Conference, May 2015
Every year in May, INSEAD’s PE Club (IPEC) organises what has become Europe’s largest MBA-led private
equity conference. This event has evolved into an exceptional forum for discussion of the latest industry
developments within the setting of a collegial campus environment. Each fall, IPEC holds an equivalent oncampus conference in Singapore with a focus on the latest trends impacting PE in Asia.
This year’s conference in May ran under the theme of: “How to create value when faced with
high valuations.”
INSEAD’s dean Ilian Mihov, a renowned economist, opened the conference
with deliberations around liquidity, cycles and the recent strong
performance of the PE industry. In order to prepare for headwinds in the
global economy, he urged PE practitioners to focus on building better
companies ready to weather cyclical downturns.
The emphasis of focusing on “traditional” private equity strengths was
echoed by the conference’s first key-note speaker, INSEAD alumnus and
Co-CEO of Apax Partners, Andrew Sillitoe. Andrew walked through the
lifecycle of PE, from investing to value creation during the holding period
to exit, placing emphasis on how discipline, focus, transformation and
readiness to sell during favourable market conditions combine to deliver
strong, defensible returns.
Some of Andrew’s points were further deliberated and challenged during the subsequent LBO panel, while
the concurrent VC panel explored the role VC plays in Europe and to what extent there is opportunity to
find and support truly innovative companies in the region. The next round of panels discussed opportunities
in growth investing in Africa and global distressed investing, in which panellists shared their approaches
to selecting investments in the wide and varied African market context and restructuring company balance
sheets and turnarounds.
The second key-note speakers, Céline Méchain and Charles-Eduard van Rossum from Goldman Sachs,
gave a comprehensive and fascinating perspective on energy and oil and its implications on private equity.
Their rather sombre outlook on the price of oil has in the meantime been overtaken by a stronger downward
development than forecasted, and commodity prices have become a main source of uncertainty and
volatility across global markets.
The operational value panel in the afternoon circled back to the morning
sessions, covering different approaches to improving portfolio company
performance, from top line to cash flow management. The infrastructure
panel explored the strong secular investment trends of resource efficiency
and alternative energy investment.
The last panel of the day, held in parallel to a well-attended session on
Careers in PE, consisted of a group of senior LPs – all INSEAD alumni –
who talked about different ways of staying disciplined in this industry
environment. They provided both global and European perspectives and
acknowledged the unique challenges of building a portfolio in times of
high liquidity.
The conference was well attended by more than 350 participants, the majority of whom were alumni,
investment professionals, general and limited partners, and C-level executives.
We thank AlpInvest for sponsoring the conference and congratulate the student team on putting together
another great event! Thanks also go out to the alumni chapter of IPEC for their support and for maintaining
a strong link with their alma mater.
The next IPEC conference will take place on November the 6th in Singapore.
The student organising committee for the European Conference consisted of Guillaume Adnot (Head of Conference), Andrew Holt (Co-President
IPEC), Liza Azu, Arka Banerjee, Arnaud Bosquet, Onur Candar, Leonardo Canepa, Josee Carignan, Aditi Chand, Amyn Kassam, Walid Kenaissi,
Vadym Kononenko, Gideon Ochar, Omur Onk, Frank Opono, Roman Protasevich, Dushyant Sahani, Siddharth Rao, Natalia Rybakova, Patrick
Steuer.