Cambridge’s Auerbach Says It’s a Great Time to Sell in PE

Andrea Auerbach, global head of private investment research at Cambridge Associates, spoke to Bloomberg TV about private equity valuations, fundraising, and the abundance of PE strategies that have come to market in the last decade. These “off-shoots” from plain vanilla PE strategies are all in pursuit of finding and generating the compelling return for institutional investors in this current market environment.

Interview highlights include:

• “It’s a very high valuation environment for private equity. It’s a great time to sell, and not a great time to buy. You have to be looking under rocks and stones and thinking about what is your investment angle going to be? Because if you buy high, you’ll have to sell for higher or perhaps sell for lower, which is not a good outcome.”
• “The [PE] industry is a splintering of strategies… there is an entire ecosystem of managers whose sole focus is around a subset or niche strategy.”
• “The high water mark for fundraising in PE was actually 2007. So hearing that we’re having ‘the biggest quarter ever’ resonates and feels like what’s old is new again.”

Watch the ~4 minute interview clip here.