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Private Equity Fund
A private equity fund (abbreviated as PE fund) is a collective investment scheme used for making investments in various equity (and to a lesser extent debt) securities according to one of the investment strategies associated with private equity. Private equity funds are typically limited partnerships with a fixed term of 10 years (often with annual extensions). At inception, institutional investors make an unfunded commitment to the limited partnership, which is then drawn over the term of the fund. From the investors' point of view, funds can be traditional (where all the investors invest with equal terms) or asymmetric (where different investors have different terms).Metrick, Andrew, and Ayako Yasuda. "The economics of private equity funds."Review of Financial Studies (2010): hhq020. A private equity fund is raised and managed by investment professionals of a specific private-equity firm (the general partner and investment advisor). Typically, a single private-equity firm wil ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Collective Investment Scheme
An investment fund is a way of investing money alongside other investors in order to benefit from the inherent advantages of working as part of a group such as reducing the risks of the investment by a significant percentage. These advantages include an ability to: * hire professional investment managers, who may offer better returns and more adequate risk management; * benefit from economies of scale, i.e., lower transaction costs; * increase the asset diversification to reduce some unsystematic risk. It remains unclear whether professional active investment managers can reliably enhance risk adjusted returns by an amount that exceeds fees and expenses of investment management. Terminology varies with country but investment funds are often referred to as investment pools, collective investment vehicles, collective investment schemes, managed funds, or simply funds. The regulatory term is undertaking for collective investment in transferable securities, or short collective invest ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
First Data Corp
First Data Corporation is a financial services company headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, United States. The company's STAR Network provided nationwide domestic debit acceptance at more than 2 million retail POS, ATM, and Online outlets for nearly a third of all U.S. debit cards. First Data has six million merchants, the largest in the payments industry. The company handles 45% of all US credit and debit transactions, including handling prepaid gift card processing for many US brands such as Starbucks. It processes around 2,800 transactions per second and $2.2 trillion in card transactions annually, with an 80% market share in gas and groceries in 2014. First Data's SpendTrend Report is a key shopping metric for national news networks such as '' WSJ, USA Today'', ''ESPN'', ''The New York Times'', Vox Media, and ''Bloomberg''. In October 2015, First Data returned to public markets, selling 160 million shares in the New York Stock Exchange’s biggest IPO of that year. On Januar ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Publicly Traded
A public company is a company whose ownership is organized via shares of stock which are intended to be freely traded on a stock exchange or in over-the-counter markets. A public (publicly traded) company can be listed on a stock exchange (listed company), which facilitates the trade of shares, or not (unlisted public company). In some jurisdictions, public companies over a certain size must be listed on an exchange. In most cases, public companies are ''private'' enterprises in the ''private'' sector, and "public" emphasizes their reporting and trading on the public markets. Public companies are formed within the legal systems of particular states, and therefore have associations and formal designations which are distinct and separate in the polity in which they reside. In the United States, for example, a public company is usually a type of corporation (though a corporation need not be a public company), in the United Kingdom it is usually a public limited company (plc), in F ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Privately Held
A privately held company (or simply a private company) is a company whose shares and related rights or obligations are not offered for public subscription or publicly negotiated in the respective listed markets, but rather the company's stock is offered, owned, traded, exchanged privately, or over-the-counter. In the case of a closed corporation, there are a relatively small number of shareholders or company members. Related terms are closely-held corporation, unquoted company, and unlisted company. Though less visible than their publicly traded counterparts, private companies have major importance in the world's economy. In 2008, the 441 largest private companies in the United States accounted for ($1.8 trillion) in revenues and employed 6.2 million people, according to ''Forbes''. In 2005, using a substantially smaller pool size (22.7%) for comparison, the 339 companies on ''Forbes'' survey of closely held U.S. businesses sold a trillion dollars' worth of goods and services (4 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Leverage (finance)
In finance, leverage (or gearing in the United Kingdom and Australia) is any technique involving borrowing funds to buy things, hoping that future profits will be many times more than the cost of borrowing. This technique is named after a lever in physics, which amplifies a small input force into a greater output force, because successful leverage amplifies the comparatively small amount of money needed for borrowing into large amounts of profit. However, the technique also involves the high risk of not being able to pay back a large loan. Normally, a lender will set a limit on how much risk it is prepared to take and will set a limit on how much leverage it will permit, and would require the acquired asset to be provided as collateral security for the loan. Leveraging enables gains to be multiplied.Brigham, Eugene F., ''Fundamentals of Financial Management'' (1995). On the other hand, losses are also multiplied, and there is a risk that leveraging will result in a loss if financi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Venture Capital
Venture capital (often abbreviated as VC) is a form of private equity financing that is provided by venture capital firms or funds to startups, early-stage, and emerging companies that have been deemed to have high growth potential or which have demonstrated high growth (in terms of number of employees, annual revenue, scale of operations, etc). Venture capital firms or funds invest in these early-stage companies in exchange for equity, or an ownership stake. Venture capitalists take on the risk of financing risky start-ups in the hopes that some of the firms they support will become successful. Because startups face high uncertainty, VC investments have high rates of failure. The start-ups are usually based on an innovative technology or business model and they are usually from high technology industries, such as information technology (IT), clean technology or biotechnology. The typical venture capital investment occurs after an initial "seed funding" round. The first ro ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Limited Partner
A limited partnership (LP) is a form of partnership similar to a general partnership except that while a general partnership must have at least two general partners (GPs), a limited partnership must have at least one GP and at least one limited partner. Limited partnerships are distinct from limited liability partnerships, in which all partners have limited liability. The GPs are, in all major respects, in the same legal position as partners in a conventional firm: they have management control, share the right to use partnership property, share the profits of the firm in predefined proportions, and have joint and several liability for the debts of the partnership. As in a general partnership, the GPs have actual authority, as agents of the firm, to bind the partnership in contracts with third parties that are in the ordinary course of the partnership's business. As with a general partnership, "an act of a general partner which is not apparently for carrying on in the ordinary co ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Private Equity Secondary Market
In finance, the private-equity secondary market (also often called private-equity secondaries or secondaries) refers to the buying and selling of pre-existing investor commitments to private-equity and other alternative investment funds. Given the absence of established trading markets for these interests, the transfer of interests in private-equity funds as well as hedge funds can be more complex and labor-intensive. Sellers of private-equity investments sell not only the investments in the fund but also their remaining unfunded commitments to the funds. By its nature, the private-equity asset class is illiquid, intended to be a long-term investment for buy-and-hold investors, including "pension funds, endowments and wealthy families selling off their private equity funds before the pools have sold off all their assets". For the vast majority of private-equity investments, there is no listed public market; however, there is a robust and maturing secondary market available for s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Initial Public Offering
An initial public offering (IPO) or stock launch is a public offering in which shares of a company are sold to institutional investors and usually also to retail (individual) investors. An IPO is typically underwritten by one or more investment banks, who also arrange for the shares to be listed on one or more stock exchanges. Through this process, colloquially known as ''floating'', or ''going public'', a privately held company is transformed into a public company. Initial public offerings can be used to raise new equity capital for companies, to monetize the investments of private shareholders such as company founders or private equity investors, and to enable easy trading of existing holdings or future capital raising by becoming publicly traded. After the IPO, shares are traded freely in the open market at what is known as the free float. Stock exchanges stipulate a minimum free float both in absolute terms (the total value as determined by the share price multiplied by the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
EBITDA
A company's earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (commonly abbreviated EBITDA, pronounced , , or ) is a measure of a company's profitability of the operating business only, thus before any effects of indebtedness, state-mandated payments, and costs required to maintain its asset base. It is derived by subtracting from revenues all costs of the operating business (e.g. wages, costs of raw materials, services ...) but not decline in asset value, cost of borrowing, lease expenses, and obligations to governments. Though often shown on an income statement, it is not considered part of the Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) by the SEC and the SEC hence requires that companies registering securities with it (and when filing its periodic reports) reconcile EBITDA to net income. Usage and criticism EBITDA is widely used when assessing the performance of a company. EBITDA is useful to assess the underlying profitability of the operating businesses ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mezzanine Capital
In finance, mezzanine capital is any subordinated debt or preferred equity instrument that represents a claim on a company's assets which is senior only to that of the common shares. Mezzanine financings can be structured either as debt (typically an unsecured and subordinated note) or preferred stock. Mezzanine capital is often a more expensive financing source for a company than secured debt or senior debt. The higher cost of capital associated with mezzanine financings is the result of it being an unsecured, subordinated (or junior) obligation in a company's capital structure (i.e., in the event of default, the mezzanine financing is only repaid after all senior obligations have been satisfied). Additionally, mezzanine financings, which are usually private placements, are often used by smaller companies and may involve greater overall levels of leverage than issues in the high-yield market; they thus involve additional risk. In compensation for the increased risk, mezzanine ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Debt Financing
Debt is an obligation that requires one party, the debtor, to pay money or other agreed-upon value to another party, the creditor. Debt is a deferred payment, or series of payments, which differentiates it from an immediate purchase. The debt may be owed by sovereign state or country, local government, company, or an individual. Commercial debt is generally subject to contractual terms regarding the amount and timing of repayments of principal and interest. Loans, bonds, notes, and mortgages are all types of debt. In financial accounting, debt is a type of financial transaction, as distinct from equity. The term can also be used metaphorically to cover moral obligations and other interactions not based on a monetary value. For example, in Western cultures, a person who has been helped by a second person is sometimes said to owe a "debt of gratitude" to the second person. Etymology The English term "debt" was first used in the late 13th century. The term "debt" comes from ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
