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Apollo’s Intrado seeks buyer for Health Advocate, ACON SPAC raises $250m for IPO, PE looks to shore up Capitol Hill in allies in 2020 elections
 
Monday, September 21, 2020
 
 
Morning!

Milana Vinn with PE Hub sat down with Arvindh Kumar, new head of EQT's North American TMT focus, for a Q&A about the firm's approach and what it's seeing in the market these days. Below is a sample. Read the full story here:

Did covid-19 impact your investment process in any way, and if so, how?

What covid did is it cut out companies that are not accelerating customers through digital transformation.

If it’s not pretty obvious how they are accelerating the customer journey, we don’t really spend time on them. Companies that are doing so are even more expensive than they were pre-covid. So it is very difficult to invest in attractive risk-reward.

To get deals done you need a real angle to get conviction. Covid is really feeding a bigger bifurcation between “have” and “have nots.”

What I mean by that is there are companies that pretty asymmetrically benefit in the covid environment, such as Zoom, Amazon, Salesforce. But there are smaller businesses that are doing the same thing. So we focus on those. vid-19 impact your investment process in any way, and if so, how?
 
 
 
Top Scoops
 
Apollo Global Management-backed Health Advocate is on the block as the pandemic is encouraging a sharper focus on employee health and wellness, writes Sarah Pringle on PE Hub. Read it here.
 
 
 
Risk ... with the federal government holding the interest rate low to prop up markets during the pandemic lockdown, investors, as they have for the past decade, are desperately searching for yield. In the fixed income realm, the one place they can still turn for return is leveraged loans.

Financial Times reported last week that almost 24 percent of capital raised in US loan market was used to fund dividend recaps, up from an average of less than 4 percent over the last two years. Investors are rushing in, and GPs are taking advantage to send money back to LPs. The risk is making portfolio companies vulnerable at a time of great uncertainty in the markets -- putting American jobs at risk to make sure LPs are happy. Read it here.

Have a great day! Reach me with your thoughts, tips, gossip, whatever at [email protected], on Twitter or find me on LinkedIn.
 
 
 
 
Premium
 
 
 
 
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Baby gear marketplace Rebelstork closes C$2m seed round
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Rhombus Energy Solutions nabs Series C
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MentorWorks inks $1.25m
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Imagine Impact snags Series A
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Firms and Funds
 
 
 
 
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