Monday 2 November: "Capitalism is changing for the better"
Business, and particularly those fuelled by Guernsey's specialism of private equity financing, will not be derailed by the Covid-19 crisis, the first session of this autumn's Funds Forum webinars heard today.
Our panellists for the "Sanctuary II" forum - Gurpreet Manku, Deputy Director General and Director of Policy at the British Venture Capital and Private Equity Association (BVCA), and Mark O'Hare, founder and Chief Executive of Preqin, the market data analysts, agreed that the private equity model was far from broken in the current environment.
"The model is still intact," said Mr O'Hare, who quoted Preqin research highlighting that PE and private capital investment and deals were still holding up strongly through the pandemic. "Private capital is still very much where it was."
Ms Manku referenced the experience of the PE sector to support portfolio businesses through what had been, for some, a significant cash-flow crisis.
"In some cases they have been able to accelerate work which was already planned. The webinar asks the question whether capitalism with a purpose is rhetoric or reality. It is definitely reality.
"The private equity industry needs to talk more loudly about its impact on the economy, with our investment in SMEs, helping businesses to grow, transform, and become more sophisticated, and we can help them with reporting demands to make businesses more sustainable in the future."
Discussions, moderated by Miles Celic, Chief Executive of TheCityUK, also covered ESG and the extent of how financial support from governments through the pandemic may be distorting the market.
ESG, they agreed, was "sustainability in its broadest sense".
Guernsey Finance Chief Executive Rupert Pleasant described the PE sector as "alive and kicking, adapting and looking for opportunities" which was part of a landscape where "capitalism is changing for the better".
Watch the webinar on demand HERE.
Our coverage of part two of Sanctuary II, the Guernsey Funds Forum webinar series, follows tomorrow.
For more information about Guernsey's finance industry please visit www.weareguernsey.com.
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