Join us for CEO Trust's Navigating Private Equity - Webinar with Mike Lorelli on January 27th. In anticipation of that event here is a related article:

By Michael K. Lorelli, CEO Trustee and upcoming webinar keynote

Working with, or for, a private equity backed company, is the ‘new age’ of building your career success, and career credentials.

In a now-famous, Wall Street Op-Ed piece on November 17th, 2017, they cited that the number of public companies with over $500 million in revenues, was cut in half, as a result of all the M&A over the recent decades. Many people thought this was a typo. It wasn’t. And every day that you pick up the WSJ, there is another one of those public companies, that was bought. 

https://www.wsj.com/articles/where-have-all-the-public-companies-gone-1510869125

Personally, we wish the article would have gone on to showcase that in that same timeframe, private equity has quietly exploded to the point where there are 18,000 private equity portfolio companies. That’s more than 4 times as many as public companies, and growing, not imploding. You don’t “see” that explosion, because the public company news is on Page A1of the Wall Street Journal. Private equity, is, sadly, covered on Page B4.

Why is one sector shrinking, while the other sector is exploding? The answer is simple. Investors aren’t stupid. They place their bets on annual returns. The chart below speaks for itself. 

So let’s presume that we may have increased your interest in placing your next career bet on building your experience in the private equity sector. In the public sector, there are the companies that do 150% of things right... Apple, Google, and the like. Similarly, the same is true in private equity. The chart below shows that Audax Group has risen to now be the largest private equity company in terms of activity (deals), with 87 companies in their portfolio. They are indeed, the ‘Warren Buffett- Berkshire Hathaway’ of private equity firms.

Most Active P.E. Firms in the US

1 Audax Group 87

2 HarbourVest Partners 64

3 Genstar Capital 58

4 The Carlyle Group 45

4 Shore Capital Partners 45

4 ABRY Partners 45

7 Kohlberg Kravis Roberts 42

8 Insight Partners 41

8 Summit Partners 41

10 Harvest Partners 38 Source: PitchBook 2019 Rankings

And Accent Foods is extremely pleased to have Audax as our ‘Parent.’ They are obviously dedicated to our success, and as such, they provide us a wealth of experience and resource that simply would not be available to us, on our own. And we enjoy the synergistic relationship that the senior leadership team has with them. It makes coming to work every day, not ‘coming to work’ at all. It’s thrilling.