The value of private equity business in Guernsey reached its highest-ever level the end of September 2018, according to the latest fund statistics from the Guernsey Financial Services Commission.

The Clwyd Pension Fund has confirmed a £10 million equity investment in the £25 million Wales Management Succession Fund. This is the first time an institutional equity investor has backed a fund managed by the Development Bank of Wales or its predecessor Finance Wales. 

The Wales Management Succession Fund was first launched in 2016 by Welsh Government with an initial £10 million investment alongside £5 million of legacy funding. The fund provides ambitious Welsh business owners and management teams with the funding they need to buy established Welsh small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs) when their current owners retire or sell. Equity investments of between £500,000 and £3 million are available.

Goji, the specialist direct lending investment manager and platform, has launched its 25th platform technology client, enabling 25 direct lending investment managers to offer financial products, such as the IF ISA to retail investors.

Five of these managers were added just this month, including Earthworm, Dot Fund, Route Finance, Growth Capital Ventures and Bird Box Bonds and there are at least ten more who are looking to launch using Goji’s technology by the end of the tax year. These new firms are in addition to Goji’s existing client base who include the likes of Downing, Landbay and Assetz Capital.

Beauhurst's latest edition of The Deal 2018 shows that deal numbers dropped from 1,744 in 2017 to 1,572 in 2018, and amount invested fell from £8.6b to £7b respectively. But this figure is still well up on previous years, and the decline could be interpreted as a "correction" from the unprecedented levels seen in 2017.

Despite the overall downturn, crowdfunding platforms continue to grow with a record year in terms of deal numbers. 

Download the report here 

Alastair George, Chief Investment Strategist at Edison Investment Research discusses his outlook for 2019 in the attached strategy note.

Following the heavy Government defeat on the Brexit withdrawal motion, PIMFA, the trade association for the personal investment management and financial advice sector, re-emphasises the requirement for legislators and Government executives to keep uppermost the interests of individuals and families as they develop alternative proposals for parliamentarians to consider in the days ahead.  The private clients of PIMFA member firms, who come from all parts of society and not just the wealthy sector, have around £1.5 trillion of personal investment and savings, including pensions, under advice or management by these firms and preservation of the value of their personal assets, so they benefit rather than suffer from decisions about the UK’s relationship with its EU partners, is a paramount concern.

Intertrust, a global leader in providing expert administrative services to clients operating and investing in the international business environment, interviewed private equity professionals across Europe, North America, the Middle East and Asia to identify the value-add delivered by new technologies now and in the future.

• Over half (53%) of respondents to the survey believe financial services creates the most potential for value creation through technological innovation, ahead of healthcare (18%), consumer (8%), energy (8%), industrials (8%) and TMT (5%).
• More than half (51%) identified the biggest technology risk when assessing target companies as cybersecurity or data breaches

he latest Companies House data, as analysed by the Centre for Entrepreneurs (CFE), shows that business formations recovered from a drop in 2017 to reach a record 663,272 in 2018.

“It is encouraging to see formation numbers recover and hit a new high,” says Matt Smith, director of the Centre for Entrepreneurs. “These figures demonstrate the resilience and confidence of entrepreneurs across the country, confirmed by a 5.7% increase of business registrations and the strengthening of London as Europe’s leading startup hub.”

Heartwood Investment Management, the asset management arm of Handelsbanken in the UK, 

By Robert Crowter-Jones, Head of Private Capital at Saranac Partners

Families now tend to allocate 10-30% of their total assets into private capital investments, with debt/equity exposure via funds and direct investments growing year-on-year

Transaction Network Services (TNS) is increasing its financial services offerings to include a new Peer-to-Peer (P2P) Virtual Private Network (VPN) solution that provides low-cost, secure connectivity to the TNS Secure Trading Extranet.

This new P2P VPN is a simplified solution which can help organizations significantly reduce the total cost of ownership of their VPN estate and allow TNS customers to reach TNS’ extensive global financial community of interest.  

Tom Elliott, deVere Group’s International Investment Strategist, comments on what we can expect in 2019, after a turbulent start to the year on global financial markets.