Even a mere 5percentt drop in the value of those holdings could dent the scant $15 million equity cushion the company has before it would have to invade its minimum capital mandated by regulation.
But the acquisition of the investment banking powerhouse is ill timed: Capital markets activity and mergers and acquisitions are drying up with the bear market, and the scant amount of equity underwriting in 2001 will be horded by top players like Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch.
That helps to compensate for private equity's scant banking track record and to ensure that buying a bank is not just another get-rich-quick proposition.
Put differently, after shareholders delegate monitoring to banks following covenant violations, the marginal impact of creditor governance in lowering agency cost and boosting tax efficiency is bigger among firms that were under scant monitoring from their equity holders.
PR firms are used to explaining a transaction; dinners and conferences help raise the firms' profiles with executives who may be harbouring ambitions to manage a buy-out; but Ms Bloomgarden sees scant evidence yet of private-equity firms engaging in external communications.That is unsurprising: by habit, private equity has operated out of the limelight.
During that same period, earnings per share increased 19%, and return on equity rose 15%, with scant leverage.
The caller ran some numbers by Orman — her household had $30,500 in savings, which Orman seemed to think was scant, plus a car loan, a home-equity loan and a mortgage — but Orman granted economic absolution.
The European Investment Bank, which backs a majority of the United Kingdom's VC funds, has slashed deals with UK VCs and private equity groups by more than two-thirds, with scant equivalent funding from the UK government in sight.
We have scant information since it's privately held and structured as private equity.
In four of the first seven months of 2000, the average domestic diversified equity fund lost money, and through July, it had returned a scant 1.85percentt.
