PEWire Live kicked off its two-day CFO/COO Summit on Wednesday, where industry experts spanning the private equity space looked at how the social and financial upheaval on a global scale of the last twelve months have impacted GPs from an operational perspective.
More than one year on from the onset of the pandemic, and with the vaccine rollout well underway, there seemed to be a sense of increased certainty on outlook now, compared with this time last year.
The first day focused on how businesses will deal with today’s hybrid home/office work environment, and how people are slowly starting to go back to the office again while navigating this ‘hybrid model’ of flexible working – a practice that the panel agreed firms and their portfolio companies will experience more of moving forward.
Technology is no longer a limiting factor, it will be the culture of the company that dictates how and when people return to the office, according to Jamie Smith, director of International Technology at Eze Castle Integration. The first day’s following panels looked at new trends and challenges within operational due diligence, as well as tech-driven insights and the path towards digitisation.
Day two dealt with Covid-related short-term liquidity risks, some of the main cybersecurity issues and ESG considerations for PE practitioners to keep in mind, ESG reporting and setting the right KPIs, and constructive ways to evolve the COO role in the future.
From this rich agenda plenty of lively and subtle discussions emerged, with nuanced perspectives and a timely call to embrace forthcoming change in all its different aspects: whether it relates to using new technology within portfolio companies, frontier ESG developments or the encouragement and implementation of increased diversity across the private equity industry as a whole.
In terms of funding news this week, Warburg Pincus invested USD110 million into a Series C round for New York-based healthcare tech company Aetion. The round is the latest in a string of similar investments within the health technology space for the global growth equity private equity group.
Warburg Pincus has poured in excess of USD12 billion and USD22 billion to date into health care and technology companies respectively, including companies like Alignment Healthcare, Experity, Intelligent Medical Objects, Modernizing Medicine, and Outset Medical.
Fly Now Pay Later, a UK fintech company which is bravely aiming to defy the current downturn in the travel industry by financing travel post Covid-19 raised a Series A funding round this week, while multi-stage VC fund EQT Ventures led a USD40 million Series B funding into Airkit on the back of the company’s recent USD28 million Series A announcement.
Karin Wasteson
Editor, Private Equity Wire