LONDON, Nov 28 (Reuters) – The Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS), Britain’s second-largest pension fund, has added two analysts to its private equity team as it looks to increase its allocation to alternative assets.
USS has appointed former ABN Amro analyst Sweta Chattopadhyay to focus on direct investment and co-investment, while Tim Tyshing, who joins from ANZ [...]

President Ma Ying-jeou said Tuesday that he is confident Taiwan’s high-technology industry has the opportunity to experience prosperity next year despite negative growth recently amid tough economic times. Ma made the comments at the Presidential Office in the morning while meeting participants of the 2008 Taiwan Venture Forum.
The forum, organized by the Taiwan Private Equity [...]

LONDON (Reuters) – Specialist buyers of secondary private equity investments are in a perilous business, as bargains now may soon prove to be rip-offs, with a mountain of assets looking set to be dumped on the market.
Perfectly sound second-hand private equity assets can be had for a 30-percent discount and more questionable ones for no [...]

The head of Europe’s biggest investor in private equity on Wednesday warned that the industry faced a “very harsh adjustment” if the economy suffered a prolonged slowdown and called for the fees it charges to be adjusted accordingly. Wim Borgdorff, head of fund investments at Alpinvest, which has invested €40bn ($50.3bn) in private equity on [...]

Kyiv, Ukraine, November 19, 2008-IFC, a member of the World Bank Group, is supporting the development of the private equity sector in Ukraine, Belarus, and Moldova by participating in the Emerging Europe Growth Fund II, a new private equity fund managed by Horizon Capital. IFC has committed $20 million to EEGF II, which raised $390 [...]

(Reuters) – California Public Employees’ Retirement System, the largest U.S. public pension fund, is back in the market for stakes in private equity funds after selling $2 billion of partnerships earlier this year, Bloomberg said.
“It’s now a better time to be a buyer of secondary (investments) than a seller,” Leon Shahinian, Calpers’ senior investment officer [...]

LONDON and NEW YORK (19 November 2008)—Europe’s venture capital industry saw deal activity and investment slow in the third quarter of 2008 with 209 deals completed—the second-lowest quarterly total on record—and €1.18 billion invested, a 5% drop from the €1.24 billion invested in 245 deals during the same period last year, according to Dow Jones [...]

Nov. 14 (Bloomberg) — Canada Pension Plan Investment Board may bid for private-equity assets including those owned by U.K.’s Wellcome Trust Ltd. to take advantage of depressed prices, Chief Executive Officer David Denison said.
“We are absolutely interested” in the Wellcome Trust assets, Denison said Nov. 12 in a telephone interview. “We will look at those [...]

LONDON, Nov 17 (Reuters) – A dearth of capital provided by banks may drive public companies into the arms of cash-rich private equity firms and could help kick-start the moribund market for public-to-private buyouts. There have been some signs of revival in the market that has been virtually shut for more than a year, private [...]

Private equity funds, investing in unlisted companies, invested 195.2 million euros in Romanian companies in the first half of 2008, down 30% from H1 2007, Chairman of the South-East Europe Private Equity Association (SEEPA) Robert Luke told a news conference on November 13.
In the first part of 2008, the private equity funds ploughed 251 million [...]