How to Raise Private Equity and Venture Capital

In a very competitive equity market, how do you position your business to attract the capital you need to survive and thrive?

Private Equity (PE) in Australia remains one of the key sources of funding for small to medium sized enterprises and a key driver of economic growth.

In the current economic climate, raising traditional bank debt to finance business growth or succession has become incredibly challenging, and as a result many business owners are turning to PE firms.

This is not surprising given that the PE and Venture Capital (VC) market in Australia has grown significantly since 1998.

While the PE and VC market experienced a period of consolidation during 2010, investment levels stayed relatively resilient despite the general uncertainty.

To put this into context…

Is Your Bank A Stakeholder In Your Business Or The Enemy?

With the number of insolvencies continuing to rise it is important for businesses to re-visit their strategies for managing their banks.

Most businesses present a good picture to their bank when they need to increase or extend their facilities due to business expansion, or when a loan matures.

However, once the facilities are in place, do you simply react to your bank’s questions and annual reviews? Or are you pro-active in managing the relationship, both in the good times and bad?

3 Steps to Capital Raising

The first thing any business needs to do when capital raising is to carefully select the right advisor, as I’ve explained in a previous post. (Choose Your Advisor Carefully) The second thing is to put good management in place to look after the business, as the capital-raising process can take up to six months and [...]

Capital Raising For Your Business

Things are now tighter in the local credit market than they appeared to be a few months ago. Previously I had suggested that things seemed to be easing in capital markets and that access to funding had improved. It certainly looked that way in the early part of the year when a renewed confidence appeared [...]

Capital Raising For Small Business –Choose Your Advisor Carefully

However raising capital is a difficult exercise for young and entrepreneurial businesses. In essence you are asking investors to give you their cash and speculate that you are the next Henry T. Ford who’s just about to commercialise the automobile (such high expectations are not beyond some investors, such is the premium they place on their capital).

Capital Raising For Your Business

Times have certainly changed for businesses over the past few years and getting finance is no longer the simple process that it once was. Especially during the recent GFC, anyone wanting to expand their business had a tough time convincing the banks to loosen the purse strings.

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