Private Equity Transactions Symposium 2020

2020 has certainly been an interesting year for all of us, in so many respects (as citizens, business operators, service providers, travelers, family members and members of the private equity community, just to name a few) and the pace of surprise does not seem to abate.While we are very hopeful that we will be able to reconvene in person for our Symposium in the more traditional way in London in 2021, we are at this point converting the 2020 Symposium to a virtual one.

This will be a novel endeavor, and will present challenges and opportunities for all of us. But we very much want to reconnect to our traditional participants, as well as to use the opportunity to reach out in particular to the private equity community on the West Coast of the US, for whom the London location and time zone ordinarily would be quite inconvenient. We have always had participation and interest from the West Coast, but this year we have deliberately picked a time and topics that we hope will include them more easily. In particular, this year:

• The Symposium will be held over two days, Wednesday and Thursday October 7 and 8, starting at 4pm in London.

  	Starting	Finishing (approx.)
  US West Coast	8am	10am
  New York	11am	1pm
  London	4pm	6pm
  Continental Europe	6pm	8pm

• In addition to our traditional topics the Symposium this year will include some speakers who we have not had historically in person in London including:
• • Two West Coast partners from technology-focused Vista Private Equity, Betty Hung and Monti Saroya, who will talk about the unique characteristics and lifecycle of tech deals.
  • Simon Lyons from PJT Partners London, returning from the 2019 Symposium to cover the state of the market in PE from the investment banker’s perspective, will be joined by Greg Dalvito, also from PJT and with 25 years experience in tech deals, to emphasize that segment.
  • A session with Sir Martin Sorrell, the founder of WPP plc and S4 Capital plc, and Daniel Pinto, the founder and CEO of Stanhope Capital, to talk about private equity entrepreneurship and the differences from the CEO and sponsor perspectives of public versus private ownership.
  • One session on recovery investing, using the Expedia case study, with Reed Rayman from Apollo; and a parallel session on loan-to-own distressed investing, with Suzy Gibbons from Davidson Kempner.
  • A GC roundtable including Karen King of Silver Lake, John Suydam of Apollo, Robert Knauss of Warburg Pincus, Susanne Clark of Centerbridge and David Sorkin of KKR.
  • A post presentation networking and discussion opportunity which we are told will approximate our lunch and cocktail party intimacy.