NEWSLETTER of March 5, 2021

The following content has been added at finexpert:

Houlihan Lokey
FINTECH MONTHLY MARKET UPDATE: JANUARY 2021
This summary of key trends and recent deal activity will serve as a valuable resource for you in navigating the uncertainties and finding opportunities presented by today's market. It presents various insights across every subcategory of fintech, including asset and wealth management, banking and lending, capital markets, corporate, insurance, payments, mortgage, and others. >more

Oliver Wyman
CHOOSE YOUR PATH: SUCCESSFUL RESTRUCTURING IN TIMES OF UNCERTAINTY
Uncertainty is an inevitable element of business. The COVID-19 pandemic hit the world almost overnight, but even before this event, many industries faced looming downturns or disruptive changes. The electrification of the automotive powertrain, the rise of the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), and fundamental changes of consumer buying habits are just a few examples of such development disrupting many industries. >more

Bain & Company
GLOBAL PRIVATE EQUITY REPORT 2021
It was a year of massive disruption and private equity emerged unscathed. Despite the tragic Covid-19 pandemic and its global economic fallout, despite the protests against police brutality and systemic racism and months of social upheaval, despite a bitterly contested US presidential election that ultimately led to an unprecedented mob assault on Capitol Hill, dealmakers kept making deals in 2020, while exits and fundraising fell in line with robust five-year averages. >more

Coller Capital
GLOBAL PRIVATE EQUITY BAROMETER: WINTER 2020-21
Investors’ main motivations will be to re-focus their resources on their best private equity managers (GPs) and to re-balance their portfolios for a post-Covid world. One third of Limited Partners will face liquidity shortfalls, which they plan to remedy through asset disposals and new credit facilities. GP-led secondaries are likely to play an important role, too. Well-structured GP-led processes are overwhelmingly popular with LPs – 85% of whom regard them as a useful tool. >more

DO INDEX FUNDS MONITOR?
Davidson Heath, Daniele Macciocchi, Roni Michaely, and Matthew C. Ringgenberg
2020
Passively managed index funds now hold over 30% of U.S. equity fund assets; this shift raises fundamental questions about monitoring and governance. We show that, relative to active funds, index funds are less effective monitors: (a) they are less likely to vote against firm management on contentious governance issues; (b) there is no evidence they engage effectively publicly or privately; and (c) they promote less board independence and worse pay-performance sensitivity at their portfolio companies. Overall, the rise of index funds decreases the alignment of incentives between beneficial owners and firm management and shifts control from investors to managers. >more

DO ACTIVIST HEDGE FUNDS TARGET FEMALE CEOS? THE ROLE OF CEO GENDER IN HEDGE FUND ACTIVISM
Bill Francis, Iftekhar Hasan, Yinjie Shen, and Qiang Wu
2020
Using a comprehensive hedge fund activism dataset, we find that activist hedge funds are about 52% more likely to target firms with female CEOs compared to firms with male CEOs. We find that firm fundamentals, the existence of a “glass cliff,” gender discrimination bias, and hedge fund activists’ inherent characteristics do not explain the observed gender effect. We further find that the transformational leadership style of female CEOs is a plausible explanation for this gender effect: instead of being self-defensive, female CEOs are more likely to communicate and cooperate with hedge fund activists to achieve intervention goals. Finally, we find that female-led targets experience greater increases in market and operational performance subsequent to hedge fund targeting. >more