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 [转帖]Investment giant thinks small---FT |
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youhighness
头衔: 海归中尉
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加入时间: 2006/10/14
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来自: 哲里木盟科尔沁左翼中旗木里图苏木爱搞不搞嘎查
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作者：youhighness 在 海归商务 发贴, 来自【海归网】 http://www.haiguinet.com
By Andrew Yeh in Beijing
Published: December 5 2006 16:14 | Last updated: December 5 2006 16:14
Carlyle, the private equity group, is not best known for making small investments – but that is exactly what it has been doing in China.
The US investment behemoth has an Asian Growth Capital fund that searches for emerging enterprises, and China figures prominently in the fund’s strategy, accounting for about half of its total number of investments.
Late last month the fund invested $20m in a local company called Time Share Advertising and Communications (TSM) that specialises in outdoor display promotions. Other details of the deal were not made public.
While that investment was tiny by Carlyle standards, it shows that the group has a keen interest in acquiring sizeable stakes in companies large and small in China, and is keeping a close eye on promising private firms.
Wayne Tsou, managing director of the group’s Asia Growth Capital fund, says its investments will vary across industries, companies at different stages of development and deal structure.
“We are flexible along all these dimensions,” Mr Tsou said in an interview. “We look for good companies and good people regardless of industry.”
The Growth Capital fund mostly makes investments in the $10m-$50m range. China and India are drawing the most attention, but the fund also invests in South Korea and Japan. Mr Tsou estimates that the fund’s total commitment to China this year will exceed $100m.
“Our pace is corresponding to the opportunities,” he says. “[But] you see the pace picking-up dramatically.”
But while Mr Tsou insists that Carlyle tries to be “industry agnostic”, the fund’s track record of investment has mostly been in media and technology. On average, his fund invests in less than 1 per cent of all opportunities that come across the table. “It’s very high selectivity,” he says.
The fund’s other China investments include the visual display company Focus Media, the online travel website Ctrip.com, the internet game company Runstar, the private loan guarantor Credit Orienwise Group and Shanghai Anxin Flooring, a wooden floor maker.
Mr Tsou says the fund is likely to make another investment in China of similar value to the TSM deal.
TSM, which helps companies to advertise on stand-alone billboards or on buildings in large cities, was established in mid-2005 by a team of advertising experts.
Industry experts say the sector is ripe for greater consolidation, with almost 600,000 billboards in the country, controlled by more than 60,000 owners. Outdoor display revenues last year were estimated at $2.4bn and the advertising sector as a whole is growing by about 20 per cent a year.
He Jilun, TSM president, says many of these properties are not being put to good commercial use, and his company is in a good position to take advantage as the “largest outdoor advertising supermarket”.
There are likely to be many more similar investments given the explosion of private enterprise and entrepreneurship in China. Washington-based Carlyle is one of a few powerful private equity groups actively scouting for Chinese companies.
Mr Tsou says one of Carlyle’s major advantages is its strong “intermediary network” of contacts throughout China, built-up since it entered the market in 1998.
Private equity investments in general, especially large deals exceeding several hundred millions of dollars or incorporating leveraged finance, are still new to China. There is not even a precise, commonly-used term for private equity in mainland China. On its Chinese-language business cards, Carlyle simply markets itself as an “investment group”. Understanding of private equity in China could deepen over time, however. Mr Tsou says that China’s more progressive business executives already have a much more thorough knowledge of private equity’s workings compared with government regulators and the public.
This unfamiliarity, coupled with the fact that Carlyle does not disclose detailed information about its main institutional and high net-worth private investors, could be playing a role in its stalled takeover of Xugong Construction Machinery.
That deal, originally valued at $375m late last year, has been held up in central government regulatory delays for more than a year. Carlyle’s investment is likely to be reduced from 85 per cent to a 50-50 joint venture with the construction equipment maker, which is owned by a local council in eastern Jiangsu province.
The Xugong investment is being handled by Carlyle’s Asia buy-out fund, which focuses on companies with market capitalisation or revenues more than $50m. Carlyle’s other Asia fund that makes China investments focuses on real estate.
Local and central government approval hold-ups will be less of a problem for the Asia Growth Capital fund since it makes more modest investments. Mr Tsou says, on average, they take two to three months to conduct due diligence on a Chinese company before committing capital. “We can move very, very quickly – we can move in a month as well,” he says. “It involves detailed interaction with the management team and their customers.”
For Carlyle, investing in emerging companies is presently a small share of its overall business. Globally, about 68 per cent of the group’s investments are buy-out deals, 11 per cent go to real estate and 7 per cent is considered venture or growth capital.
作者：youhighness 在 海归商务 发贴, 来自【海归网】 http://www.haiguinet.com
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 [转帖]Investment giant thinks small---FT -- youhighness - (5412 Byte) 2006-12-16 周六, 01:31 (974 reads)
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