23 November 2023
BDA Private Equity Conference 2023 – connecting the private equity community in Asia
BDA recently hosted its 5th annual Private Equity Conference in Singapore. The event featured 42 presenting companies, with 120 GPs and investors in attendance. The BDA PE Conference is a premier event for the Asian private equity community and provides a platform for private companies and investors to network.
Highlights of the event:
- BDA facilitated over 600 one-on-one meetings between private companies and senior PE investors. These meetings allowed attendees to engage in in-depth discussions, foster connections, and identify potential opportunities.
- The event featured presenting companies representing aggregate enterprise value in excess of US$10bn, and investors managing dry powder in excess of US$50bn.
- During the conference industry leaders participated in a GP-led secondaries panel discussion. The panel included Dominik Woessner, CFA, who is the Head of PCA Secondaries at BDA, along with other notable experts in the field, Amit Gupta of TPG Newquest, Dominic Goh of HarbourVest, and Sanjay Chakrabarty of Capital Square Partners.
Key takeaways include:
- Platform assets are drawing considerable interest as sponsors seek scaled investments, and we see a greater focus on bolt-ons to drive returns in a high-interest rate environment. There is an increased focus on creating platforms throughbuy-and-build approach in fragmented market sectors. There has historically been significant buy-and-build across corporate services and facilities services; sponsors are increasingly exploring other sectors that could benefit for the same approach.
- Sector specialization is becoming increasingly the norm among Asian sponsors, as sponsors become more focused on investing in what they know well and where they can form a differentiated view on their ability to add value.
- Asia for global is again a theme. Investing in Asian export-oriented manufacturing as a cost arbitrage play has long been out of favor, but we are seeing sponsors review large Asian businesses as strategic elements into global supply chains, especially in consumer, healthcare, and industrial tech with a focus on evaluating global strategic importance and value-add, rather than cost competitiveness.
- India and Japan remain bright spots with robust activity and pipeline across both mid-cap and large cap transactions. Regional capital and attention are being re-focused from China to those two large markets, as well as to SE Asia.
- Continuation vehicles and similar structures which increase liquidity options for LPs are becoming more common tools for GPs to consider alongside M&A and capital markets, as the focus on generating DPI increases. BDA added a private capital advisory team in 2023 to help us better serve clients on these types of transactions.
Paul DiGiacomo, Managing Partner and Head of the Financial Sponsors Group, BDA Partners, said: “We are proud to partner with the Asian PE community and believe our conference delivers unique value to both financial sponsors and private company founders and management teams. We launched our inaugural Japan PE Conference in November 2023, and expect to do so in India in H1 2024. We continue to invest to help us better serve the interest of sponsors across Asia.”
The GP-led secondaries panel discussion
Wine event at Art Di Daniele Sperindio
About BDA Partners
BDA Partners is the global investment banking advisor for Asia. We are a premium provider of Asia-related advice to sophisticated clients globally, with over 25 years’ experience advising on cross-border M&A, capital raising, and financial restructuring. We provide global reach with our teams in New York and London, and true regional depth through our seven Asian offices in Mumbai, Singapore, Ho Chi Minh City, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Seoul and Tokyo. BDA has deep expertise in the Chemicals, Consumer & Retail, Health, Industrials, Services, Sustainability and Technology sectors. We work relentlessly to earn our clients’ trust by delivering insightful advice and outstanding outcomes. BDA Partners has strategic partnerships with William Blair, a premier global investment banking business, and with DBJ (Development Bank of Japan), a Japanese government-owned bank with US$150bn of assets.
US securities transactions are performed by BDA Partners’ affiliate, BDA Advisors Inc, a broker-dealer registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). BDA Advisors Inc. is a member of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) and SIPC. In the UK, BDA Partners is authorized and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). In Hong Kong, BDA Partners (HK) Ltd is licensed and regulated by the Securities & Futures Commission (SFC) to conduct Type 1 and Type 4 regulated activities to professional investors. www.bdapartners.com
