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No Sand Between Our Toes (2016)

Why being at the bar won’t get you a drink but will make your dermatologist smile.

I’ve been spending my summer with lawyers.  It’s not a sentence for misbehavior or because I’ve committed some wrong.  It’s not been at BBQ’s or quaffing beers with my friends at the bar (groan) telling enhanced memory college war stories while listening to the surf above the clatter of conversation. We have not even been competing at Rio inspired beach volleyball pretending each slam - if we could actually jump high enough to make one over a regulation net - was for the gold medal winning point.

Nope.  It’s been nose to the grindstone reviews of complaints and counter complaints, pleadings, filings, hearings, motions, and depositions.  And it’s been fun! Now, not the fun of an exhilarating boat ride against a swift current or being elbow deep into a great steamed lobster fest.  Rather it’s been the joy of winning a tactical position, discovering confirmation of an adversary’s transgression,  laboring under the responsibility of being fully prepared to argue your belief against some very smart colleagues, enjoying the emotional fulfillment of knowing that you are right and having someone in a black robe affirm your belief. Yeah…that may seem like a poor substitute for being at the beach but as far as alternatives go it is certainly better than, say,  Disney World in August.

This year I have relished the privilege of a deep dive in litigation esoterica and SEC regulation, welcomed as a real-world contributor to strategy, even appreciated the more than occasional 2 o’clock in the morning email exchanges, and learned that being a “good” client working with open-minded and keenly intelligent lawyers makes for more than good results.  In our troubled fund practice over the last 15 years we often spurn law firm “help” – particularly at the crisis stage of an intervention as few law firms truly understand the practitioner level consequence of the standard legal playbook on a VC or PE practice that is more medieval than modern.  The vexing engagements we have been working this year required intimate assistance and leadership of a group of attorneys who, in concert with our replacement General Partner practice team, helped secure rights lost, arrested loss of value and fixed governance of particularly dynamically challenging circumstances.  The collective efforts of the Team have given our common Limited Partner clients progress and conclusions that any one of us independently would not have been able to gain.  So here’s a toast, to my friends at the bar who, while keeping me off the beach, have kept me engaged, stirred intellectually and appreciating the fire-power a well-crafted legal and operational strategy can have when dealing with wayward General Partners and the mess they leave behind.  

Here’s hoping next year we are all scrunching sand with beer in hand telling war stories about the terribly active summer of 2016.  Meanwhile our summer labor is not over. I think my lawyer friends spent less time than I did on whatever their version of a holiday may be.  Instead we are all seemingly locked in steel and glass towers under the glow of fluorescent lights rather than risk sunburn. Other than our clients, maybe only our dermatologists applaud the consequence of our busy summer this year!

Mark S. DiSalvo is the President and CEO of Sema4 Inc., dba Semaphore, www.sema4usa.com, a leading global professional services provider of troubled Private Equity, Venture Capital and Hedge funds under management. Semaphore currently holds fiduciary obligations as General Partner for eight funds, is a New Markets Tax Credit provider and advises General and Limited Partners as well as corporations around the world. Semaphore’s corporate offices are in Boston with principal offices in New York, London and Dallas.

Topics: Venture Capital, troubled funds, equity, private equity funds, Semaphore, general partners, LP, business advisory, VC, venture funds, private equity, ethics, business

No Sand Between Our Toes (2014)

Why our feet are not stuck in the mud.

I truly thought we might be skipping this 7th annual post – or have to retitle it “Feet Stuck in Mud”.  The cycle of summer seems to start only after the kids leave school and then return. My wife Tricia used to say “summer starts on the 4th of July and ends two weeks later,” and that sentiment brings near universal agreement –especially to those who have to pay attention to the back-to-school shopping rhythm and planning that truly does start in late July.     In truth, I was looking forward to an extended August respite because business was, well – just slow on the new biz development front.   No complaint, we are plenty busy and full of appreciation for clients and obligations we have right now. Our current collection of funds under management and associated portfolio companies are steaming along as we continue the work-a-day obligation of sustaining and growing value.   One of my favorites in the portfolio is going to crash through a $75 million run rate this year after plateauing near $25 million for the last few years.  Exciting stuff!  Our dozen plus Federal New Markets Tax Credit projects are either completed or in the ground, being particularly proud of the redevelopment of Liberty, Kentucky after its near total devastation by a tornado just two years ago.  We have even seen one of our completed University projects jump start an even more advantageous investment in a textbook demonstration of economic development leverage resulting in the creation of a fully privately funded nursing school. New jobs created, lives improved and strong emotional satisfaction from Florida to Oregon and San Antonio to New York City. 

So…what am I grumbling about?  In truth, we love the hunt for new fund and business opportunity.  We revel in the initial introduction to a vexing challenge.  It takes upwards of a year when we work with Limited Partners to help them understand the mitigation opportunities they have when they are involved with a troubled fund and/or recalcitrant General Partner.  All those months of free consulting – becoming intimate of the private troubles and competing interests, managing the diverse opinions and educating all parties about the complexities and opportunities of the intervention process  and the initial entry – is wonderfully exciting all by itself  (even if we don’t get paid for the effort).  I may be overselling that a bit but for those of you involved in biz dev I think you can more readily understand. 

We had at least two funds scheduled to come off the “contemplation and discovery” phase and move into “direct intervention” for the beginning of this summer.  However, for various reasons the engagements were put on pause until the fall.  We even demurred we step into one of those funds because we saw another path that would allow a repair of the GP/LP relationship twinned with some governance and oversight changes. Less income and work for us but it’s about doing the right thing for the client.  I will confess to missing the excitement of walking into a new challenge...alas. 

It was if we were planning to dig our feet firmly into the soft wet beach sand rather than trodding yet a few more airport terminals this August.  Then, just as the doldrums of summer were about to wash over us, BANG, a client crisis arrives.  Nothing is better than being able to stride into a maelstrom of doubt and fear that a challenging situation requires.  I can’t tell you about it just yet (on second thought, I’m likely to never tell you about it unless it becomes a heavily veiled business school case study) but I promise you we are enjoying the trials and pains of putting our clients at ease and reigning in the troubles caused by their badly-behaving GP. 

Maybe Tricia was right.  I did get the frantic initial Limited Partner call on July 20th. Summer did end two weeks after Independence Day.  Oh well, there is always Labor Day weekend.

Mark S. DiSalvo is the President and CEO of Sema4 Inc., dba Semaphore (www.sema4usa.com), a leading global professional services provider of troubled Private Equity and Venture Capital funds under management. Semaphore currently holds fiduciary obligations as General Partner for six Private Equity and Venture Capital funds, is a New Markets Tax Credit lender and advises General and Limited Partners as well as corporations around the world. Semaphore's corporate offices are in Boston with principal offices in New York, London and Dallas.

Topics: Venture Capital, troubled funds, equity, private equity funds, Semaphore, funds under management, general partners, limited partners, LP, portfolio company, venture funds, private equity

Results of 6th Annual Semaphore PE Industry Confidence Survey

 

Confidence at All Time High

Results of 6th Annual Semaphore PE Industry Confidence Survey

 

By Mark S. DiSalvo

Is irrational exuberance on the horizon?  Will the Merry-Go-Round ever stop? Can the Masters of the Universe continue to rule? Notwithstanding the recent February Dow swoon the 2014 Semaphore Confidence Survey suggests No, No and Yes.
Extraordinarily, 91% of our over 500 respondents were confident in their own businesses, fully 50% higher than a year ago. 94% were confident in themselves, an all-time high, growing from78% last year.  In contrast only 31% of respondents expressed confidence in the President with 49% stating a lack of confidence in him, significantly above last year’s 37% number. As miserable as that may be it is decidedly better than the leader of the other branch of government, Speaker John Boehner, who has an 11% favorable v 66% unfavorable rating. As dreadful a rating for sure but it is far better than Congress as an institution with 87% expressing no or little confidence in our elected officials and only 1% offering an expression of confidence in the House or Senate.
In contrast some 80%, nearly double last year’s 43%, remain confident in the PE/VC Industry, while 6% express confidence in the US economy and less than half at 22% enjoying confidence in the International economy. This is expressed in the near wild enthusiasm around expected deal number and size.  96% reported completing between 1 and 4 deals and a similar number expecting to do the same.  More surprisingly is that over a quarter of us completed more than six transactions and fully a third anticipate exceeding that plateau in 2014.  And the deal sizes are growing.  Across venture and PE the average initial investment size is expected to be 50% larger in 2014 than last year. 
So what will all this prospective deal effort be in? Health Care investing shot to top in expected activity, up from fourth. Enterprise Software got bumped to #2 and Energy oriented investing rocketed to third place and last year was not even in the top ten.  With Business Services ranked fourth in prospective deal making with Digital Media and Financial Services tied for 5th place. Agriculture investment broke the top ten for the first time and came in a close 6th.  Gaming was not only out of the money but also failed to make the top twenty. Social/Community Technology, On-line Consumer Retail and Food rounded out our top ten deal hopes.  
And where does all this enthusiasm and confident take us. 77% expect to earn more than they did in 2013 with only 6% expecting to earn less. This on top of the fact that 65% earned more last year than they did in 2012 and 23% reported earning less.
For the second year in a row my industry colleagues continue to see the prospect of more income, more deal flow and high confidence in themselves, their peers, and industry. This clear read comparing the raw highlight data from the 6th annual Semaphore Confidence Survey with last year’s results suggests that our industry remains on the rise.  Too much more enthusiasm and consequent riches and our seemingly hated colleagues in Congress might find it more politically palatable to eliminate capital gain rates on carry.
The distribution of respondents in the US remained nearly the same from past years - the top five were 29% California, 16% Massachusetts, 11% New York, 6% Connecticut and 5% Texas with only New Jersey dropping out of the mix (guess the GW Bridge traffic might have been too heavy to get our usual Garden State respondents to reply). DC 4% and Illinois came in at 3% and no other state represented more than 1%. Our US respondents had reasonable confidence in their state governments with 26% expressing confidence - at least in comparison to the US Congress.    
International responses were quite different.  We had our widest ever distribution of respondents with only the UK remaining on top with 37% of all international survey-takers with (10 points higher than last year) followed by  9% Canada, 7% China and 3% France rounding-out the top four just as they did the prior years. We received multiple respondents from Germany, the Philippines, Brazil, Russia, Japan, Ukraine, Viet Nam and single responses from14 other nations including our first ever from Bora Bora (must have been a PE partner on vacation!). International respondents had depressingly poor opinions of their governments with 5% expressing confidence in their countries leaders, down from 7% in 2013.   
The 563 of us who did reply this year, up from 470 last year, was over weighted by third party professional participants compared to past years.  The mix this year compared to the last year was VC (24% v 39% ), Buy-out pros (25% v 24%), Limited Partners (6% v 13%) operating executives (7% v 6%) and third party professional (38% v 18%). Hmmm…charting this back to the income responses, perhaps the continued increase in income levels is attributable to the transaction fees and expenses associated with our explosion of deal numbers and values.
Comments this year were more muted in tone than past years and can be viewed on the survey highlights link below. Perhaps the tight bandwidth contributed to the lack of wit expressed.   Here is one none-too-pleased respondent commenting on the survey itself:
            “Well done, like an overly charred steak forgotten on a summer BBQ grill. Terrible survey.”
I hate when that happens as I like my steak very rare.
Hope everyone’s expectations are indeed met in 2014.  See you next year.
To see the highlights of the results of the 2014 Semaphore Confidence Survey please click here.  If you want to do your own comparison, the 2013 Semaphore Confidence Survey results are here.
Mark S. DiSalvo is the President and CEO of Sema4 Inc., dba Semaphore (www.sema4usa.com), a leading global professional services provider of troubled Private Equity and Venture Capital funds under management. Semaphore currently holds fiduciary obligations as General Partner for six Private Equity and Venture Capital funds, is a New Markets Tax Credit lender and advises General and Limited Partners as well as corporations around the world. Semaphore's corporate offices are in Boston with principal offices in New York, London and Dallas.

Topics: Venture Capital, troubled funds, equity, private equity funds, Semaphore, funds under management, general partners, limited partners, turnaround, LP, technology, investment, market diligence, venture funds, private equity

Zombie Funds

 Apocalyptic Future or Salvation?

A few days ago Luisa Beltran of PE Hub asked whether and what we should call the now popular appellation “Zombie Funds”.  I responded to her with the following:

“Here at Semaphore we call them “clients”.  No need for a pejorative characterization. It’s rather matter of fact.   Often it’s because GPs and LPs become mutually misaligned (for instance, when a carry hurdle may never be met it just makes sense for everyone to move on – the GPs to other career interests and the LPs knowingly recognizing that a better more attuned option exists to manage out the fund).

Yes, in some high profile cases it’s because of fraud or malfeasance of a GP that we find ourselves stepping into General Partnerships at the request of the LP.  Certainly those are the notorious examples.  Funny in that the GPs we replace become our best references.  Notwithstanding, generally it’s just good business judgment to let an entity such as Semaphore step in to “refresh” the relationships and more easily get the fund portfolio to perform until appropriate liquidation of the fund. The former GP moves on to other more potentially lucrative experiences, the LPs gets a more profitable eventual liquidation and everyone’s reputation is salvaged.  So let’s commonly drive a stake into the heart of the Zombie mischaracterization and understand that end of fund life sometimes requires good and compassionate hospice care.“ 

Here is the link to some other responses - PEHub.  Take a look.  If you want to discuss this or have a challenging fund situation please write me at mdisalvo@sema4usa.com.

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Semaphore (www.sema4usa.com), is a leading global professional services provider of Private Equity and Venture Capital funds under management and diligence services. Semaphore currently holds fiduciary obligations as General Partner for six Private Equity and Venture Capital funds, is a New Markets Tax Credit lender and advises General and Limited Partners as well as corporations around the world. Semaphore’s corporate offices are in Boston with principal offices in New York, London and Dallas.

Topics: troubled funds, equity, private equity funds, Semaphore, funds under management, general partners, limited partners, turnaround, LP

Boston Lives

I had a lovely lunch at a great sushi place last week with a Limited Partner to whom I’d just become acquainted, nothing unusual there – except that the place is just a few runners strides from the finish line of the Boston Marathon. It was barely two days after the massacre in my city.  And just feet from us were a mob of live satellite trucks and a gang of media lined up cheek by jowl speaking into microphones with cameras trained on their faces, the background eerily quiet and barren. It was certainly strange seeing such a large and vibrant part of the city, some 15 blocks of Copley Square in the Back Bay cordoned off with an army of men and women wearing camo, carrying carbines and what felt like hundreds of others in white environmental suits clawing through every inch of the city’s streets and rooftop. The juxtaposition of my lunch and the sad events of hours earlier should have been alarming.  It felt rather normal, calming, and even necessary.

My new LP friend suggested we meet and support a neighborhood place that surely was bereft of business with such a wide swath of the city shut down and pall cast among patrons in the city.  We bantered with the server, asking “how is business” despite it being abundantly clear by the near empty place that should have been bustling at noon on a work day.  Our server answered that business was “dead”.  Odd word usage considering the circumstances of the day.  I know… I used to work in the restaurant biz and the phrase is always used to quite accurately describe the state of business at that moment in time.  Nonetheless, it was a bit jarring.

On the day after our lunch the President would be arriving nearby to speak at an interfaith service, thank volunteers, medical staff, and first responders.  He would comfort survivors in the hospitals scattered across Boston.  Boston is a living city.  That word, “living” should sound as strange as our server’s description of business. It did not. The city quite literally founded America.  It is North America’s most European city – in architecture and attitude.  Now it has taken on even more of a kinship as it suffers the senseless horrors of mad bombings similar to Madrid and London. I have personally experienced the atrocity of a terrorist bombing that leveled my hotel in Northern Ireland and have seen cars exploding in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.  I never imagined such events would visit home.  One world indeed.

Our working lunch was full of business challenge, intellectual questioning, a bit of fun, a comparative of cities we’d lived and worked in, and discussions of family history.  Other than the initial interaction with our server we didn’t discuss or even intimate the existence of the horrid events displayed on every headline around the globe or the ongoing investigation just a few steps away.  It was unnecessary. Neither of us forgot it. We just needed to march on – for our own sake and the city’s.

Barely a day and half after that lunch the entire city and three neighboring cities were in lockdown  – not just a dozen+ blocks – through a long evening and into the next  watching a manhunt for the final suspect brother who had perpetrated the cowardly acts of blowing up the Boston Marathon. Within minutes of the brother being found there was another explosion – of relief, of thankfulness, of appreciation for the work of police and the remembered acts of heroism by the nurses, doctors and EMT’s, firefighters and police, volunteers and  spectators  who made things better because they were acting entirely normal at the time of the greatest need.  They were simply doing their jobs. 

On the very next day my family journeyed back to the site of the Marathon finishing line to pay personal honor at the roadside memorials littered with notes of condolence, of awe and appreciation. Now it is time for all us to honor them and go about doing our own unglamorous and comparatively unimportant jobs.  We are, in our own small way, responsible for a return to a new normalcy.  Boston is a living city – made more strongly vibrant by ever remembering but somehow still casting aside the terror that visited her this third Monday of April.

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After the horrific events of this past week, our prayers go out to all of the victims, volunteers, medical staff and those who responded and stayed diligent to the end in finding those responsible. I would like to take this opportunity to suggest sending a donation to the One Fund Boston. Information can be found by visiting the One Fund website at http://onefundboston.org/ .

Mark S. DiSalvo is the President and CEO of Sema4 Inc., dba Semaphore (www.sema4usa.com), a leading global professional services provider of Private Equity and Venture Capital funds under management and diligence services. Semaphore currently holds fiduciary obligations as General Partner for six Private Equity and Venture Capital funds, is a New Markets Tax Credit lender and advises General and Limited Partners as well as corporations around the world. Semaphore’s corporate offices are in Boston with principal offices in New York, London and Dallas.

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Topics: limited partners, LP

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