DealZone

Opportunistic buyers, lovingly dubbed “tourists” by those in the industry, have moved into the secondary private equity market. They’re looking for positions in brand-name private equity funds at knock-down prices. As I wrote in a DealTalk today:”Pension funds and wealthy middle-east sovereign wealth funds are buying up investments in private equity funds, pushing up prices and sidelining secondary firms that specialise in acquiring the assets.”The market for second-hand private equity assets — where private equity investors offload assets to specialist buyers — has mushroomed as the credit crisis has intensified. And increasing numbers of cash-strapped investors are concerned about meeting their future commitments to buyout funds.”New investors have been attracted to deals by steep discounts to net asset value, forcing up prices for specialist buyers, such as Goldman Sachs (GS.N) and HarbourVest Partners (HVPE.AS) that last month closed secondary funds after reaching their $5.5 billion and $2.9 billion targets respectively.”Read the full piece here.

Even in the depths of a recession, venture capitalists are relentlessly upbeat, but one of their big customers poured cold water on that Thursday, asking some members gathered in Boston for the annual meeting of the National Venture Capital Association to go out of business.

“I hope some of you go out of business. I hope that does happen,” Rebecca Connolly, a partner in Fairview Capital, said on a panel. Her West Hartford, Connecticut, firm has about $3 billion under management, 70 percent of it in venture capital funds and the rest with private equity.  Fairview, a fund of funds, manages money for pension funds and endowments

Connolly said that until 2000, venture capital provided good returns but since the dotcom bubble burst in 2001 returns have been very disappointing, hardly justifying the investment. Venture capitalists are supposed to find small companies with big potential and help them grow into big companies, like Microsoft, Starbucks or Intel.

There seems to be an endless wave of bad news hitting the hedge fund industry at the moment -- gates and suspensions, record poor performance, the Bernard Madoff scandal and so forth -- but there are still one or two reasons to be positive.

According to a survey of institutional investors by alternative assets data group Preqin, conducted in January (and therefore after the alleged Madoff fraud came to light), only 8 percent said they were no longer confident about hedge funds and would reduce investments.

By contrast, 26 percent said they would be increasing their allocations this year.