What Private Equity is Thinking

Dow Jones is holding a Private Equity conference in NYC this week. Joseph Nelson sends along this report:

 The PE market has tons of money on the sidelines right now which will either have to be deployed or returned to the investors. This is putting pressure on many to make deals which may be of dubious nature..

Most are concerned about the regulatory hurdles. These guys are small shops for the most part so it's expensive for them to add compliance officers and their assistants. This will force some firms to drop off altogether and others will avoid entering the PE business at all. I'm not entirely sure this wasn't planned by some of the larger players while crafting Dodd-Frank...

There was also a lot of talk about corporate balance sheets and how the S&P 500 collectively have about $1T outside of the US which they won't repatriate due to the 30% tax. Many were confident that this would become a hot button issue in 2011 and that the current Congress was going to push for a tax holiday of some sort...