Watch Carlyle Group co-founder David Rubenstein explain to Chrystia why there’s greater political risk in the United States than in the emerging markets; how he gets a better reception from Chinese Communist Party cadres in Beijing than his own members of Congress in Washington; how private-equity firms can help remedy the impending entitlement crisis; and how the procedure that enacts Congressional salary increases can be adopted to cut the deficit.
Posted by Peter Rudegeair.
At last Friday’s Wharton Private Equity Partners Distressed Investing Symposium, Chrystia interviewed Mark Gallogly, co-founder and managing principal at Centerbridge Partners, a private equity and credit investment firm with $12 billion in assets under management. Gallogly said finding good opportunities in the distressed sector has become tougher as the “wall of maturities” (the point in time when debt must be refinanced) has been pushed further into the future, thanks to the booming market for corporate debt.
He notes, however, that the wall has been extended mainly for bank notes and senior debt; not for securities that are subordinate on the capital structure, like junior debt. So distressed investors should keep an eye out for situations in which a corporation’s junior debt matures much earlier than its senior debt:
Aside from buoyant bond markets, Gallogly said private equity also faces a challenge of dealing with an abundance of capital at a time when interest rates are reversing their long-term downward trend:
This piece first appeared in the Washington Post.
Watching Elena Kagan’s confirmation hearings this week, it is tempting to declare — as some have of late — that we have entered the age of women. Not just in politics but in school and in the broader economy women are doing well. Yet this female triumphalism overlooks an important exception: The areas where the real money and power reside are occupied almost exclusively by men.
Consider the industries occupying the commanding heights of capitalism: technology and finance. Google, Amazon, Apple and Facebook were all founded by men and are led by male CEOs. All of the big Wall Street banks are run by men. Hedge funds and private equity firms — where the real action is — are a male preserve. Sebastian Mallaby’s fine new history of hedge funds zeroes in on 14 chief protagonists — all male. In 400 pages, he interviews only two female hedge fund executives. Mallaby didn’t speak to more women because there aren’t many to talk to. Of the top 10 highest-paid hedge fund managers in 2009, none were women.
The absence of women at the economic summit is particularly significant because those at the very top of the income distribution have reaped the lion’s share of the rewards in the past couple of decades. For all their success elsewhere, it is precisely this economic apex that women are failing to scale.
