Good morning, Hubsters. MK Flynn here with today’s Wire.
Let’s get the working week going after the holiday with a platform investment we’ve been tracking closely.
Good start. Back in February, we told you about Alpine Investors launching an engineering services platform called Trilon. Well, now the firm has completed five deals.
PE Hub’s Obey Martin Manayiti chatted with Alpine partner Dan Sanner and Trilon chief executive Michael Renshaw to hear more about their growth strategy.
“It’s early days, but we feel like we are off to a good start, and as we compare our progress relative to our business plan, we are ahead,” said Sanner. “We have built this story around the idea of creating a functional family of companies, and that is really well received.”
The five deals include DRMP, a multi-discipline civil engineering and surveying firm headquartered in Orlando, Florida, that has expertise in transportation infrastructure. It was acquired in May with ESI, an engineering and architectural consulting services firm headquartered in Naperville, Illinois. Other acquisitions made in June include RKA, a transportation consulting company based in North Carolina, and CPH, an architecture and engineering consulting company that focuses on both the US and the Caribbean with expertise in commercial/industrial, water/wastewater, and transportation markets. And Waggoner Engineering, a Mississippi-based firm, was Trilon’s debut in February.
With the pace at which Trilon is moving, Sanner said Alpine will likely have a wide range of exit opportunities.
“A larger private equity fund could be a viable alternative,” he said. “We are starting to get to a size and scale where we could consider potentially the public markets as an exit opportunity. We are just getting started, but if we deliver against that plan, we’ll be in good shape on the exit front.”
If you’ve got leads on deals in the manufacturing, infrastructure or energy sectors, send them to Obey at obey.m@peimedia.com.
Returns, not regs. Last week, I shared with you results of a survey about GPs and proposed new regulations on private equity. (Bottom line: GPs think new regs are coming from the SEC, and most aren’t prepared.)
Today, I’ve got results from a new survey about regulations from the LP perspective. This one is from the American Investment Council, an advocacy and resource organization, and conducted by FTI Consulting, a business advisory firm.
Does the private equity industry need more regulations? No, according to most LPs who took the survey.
The majority of LPs (54 percent) said they are satisfied with the current level of regulation, and only 6 percent said they consider private equity to be “under regulated.”
“This new survey demonstrates our investors believe that the private equity industry is appropriately regulated and brings into question why Washington regulators continue to move full steam ahead with new, burdensome regulations that will impact private capital investment that strengthens pensions,” Drew Maloney, president and CEO of AIC, told me.
LPs seem pretty happy with private equity just as it is, according to the survey. If anything, LPs like the asset class more and more. When asked how their opinions of private equity have changed over the past 12 months, 80 percent of LPs reported feeling more favorably towards PE.
“We are encouraged to see that investment officers across America clearly value their relationship with the private equity industry,” Maloney said. “Investors appreciate private equity’s strong returns and recognize our industry for excellence in ethics, responsibility, long-term perspective, active management, and customer-oriented service. In this challenging environment, we need policies that recognize what LPs know: private equity is critical to supporting jobs, retirement plans and economic growth.”
The survey, which was conducted from April 8 to May 4, included 106 senior investment professionals at pension funds, endowment funds, foundations and family offices.
As always, you can reach me at mk.flynn@peimedia.com.
Women of influence. If you missed it last week, be sure to check out PEI Media’s Women of Influence, which shines a spotlight on those whose achievements, innovation and leadership are reshaping private markets across a broad range of asset classes. As part of the project, Private Equity International is featuring 10 women in private equity, including General Atlantic’s Melis Kahya Akar, CPP Investments’ Suyi Kim and KKR’s Alisa Wood.
Read the story here.
Where are they now? Every spring for the last several years, Buyouts and PE Hub have profiled 10 women in private equity who are outstanding dealmakers. The class of 2022 included Sherrese Clarke Soares, the founder of HarbourView Equity Partners; Angela Zhang, director, GI Partners; and Amy Christensen, partner, Vistria Group.
This summer Tara Lindenbaum, assistant reporter intern at PE Hub, is catching up with some of the women we’ve featured. Recently, Tara interviewed one dealmaker who was a managing director of a firm back in 2016 when we profiled her and has since gone on to found her own PE firm. We’ll be publishing excerpts from the interview soon, so stay tuned. And if you have thoughts about women in private equity you’d like to share with Tara, you can email her at tara.l@peimedia.com.
Next week, Tara and I will attend the 5th Annual Exchange, hosted by Exponent, a collective of senior women dealmakers. The event will take place on July 14 in New York, and I’ll be moderating a Fireside Chat with Kristin Johnson, managing director, Alamont Capital Partners; and Shelli Taylor, CEO, Alamo Drafthouse Cinema, a dine-in movie theater chain and streaming service backed by Altamont since 2018. Looking forward to seeing some of you there.
That’s it for today. Next up: Buyouts’ Chris Witkowsky writes the Wire on Wednesdays.
All the best,
MK