Private equity and M&A layoffs around the corner?
Posted by: admin in Investments and Raising Money
Filed under: Management, Raising money, Engagements
We’ve been digging around for the the coming layoffs at private equity firms to get a good handle on just what the economic downturn and credit crunch will mean to all the B-School kids who wanted to be the next multi-millionaires and billionaires. While no hard numbers are out industry-wide yet (at least that you can hang your hat on), there are some things trickling out.
The Deal Journal, of the Wall Street Journal, noted in a post today that American Capital Strategies (NASDAQ: ACAS) plans to let go an unspecified number of staffers in middle markets. As you can see in the chart below, they have had their fair share of pain in the process.
Dan Primack, of Private Equity Hub, also wrote a piece noting that no one is getting hired in finance anymore, so he linked to an M&A article about “how to get fired.“
Our own Zac Bissonnette wrote here on BloggingBuyouts at the end of February about how M&A was down so much that dealmakers were set for big layoffs.
But here we are at the end of April and no major firings have come the way of dealmakers. Since they cannot all jump into “distressed mortgages and loans” and since they cannot all go to work for a SPAC immediately, it seems only a matter of time and that time is sooner rather than later.
The one thing you can bet on is that there won’t be press releases out of private equity firms. They are private for a reason, well most are still private. When the news does come out it’s probably safe to assume that the firms will say this is merely a reflection of the current conditions or something of the like. Just keep in mind that companies don’t fire waves or groups of workers if they think they will be needed in a few months time.
Who knows, maybe they will just announce worker furloughs through the end of summer.
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