Sigurt Vitols: Private equity: Financial engineering or solution to market failure?

Quotable essay from ...

Private equity: Financial engineering or solution to market failure?

27 pp.
4.20 EUR
(March 2009)

For a payment by direct debit or credit card no PayPal account is required! In case of problems please contact us.

I agree with the terms and conditions, especially § 8 (only private use, no transmission to third party) and accept that my order cannot be revoked.

download size: approx. 352 kb

Sigurt Vitols takes a closer look at recent developments in financial markets and asks: “Private equity: financial engineering or solution to market failure?” He finds that on the whole, a critical analysis of Private Equity (PE) activity fails to show a clear gain for either PE investors or for employees. Given the heterogeneity of PE activity, however, which spans from ‘win-win’ cases for both society and PE investors to clearly exploitative activity, it would be desirable, according to Vitols, to consider what type of regulatory regime would discourage negative PE investments while at the same time encouraging (or at least not discouraging) the positive cases. Hence, neither a laissez-faire approach nor an outright ban on PE activity would be desirable. Finally, the author proposes a number of economic policy recommendations for the regulation of PE related to improved transparency, registration of PE funds through a public authority, regulatory standards for debt-equity ratios, eliminating tax subsidies for speculative PE, strengthening of employee rights and pressure on institutional investors (pension funds, mutual funds, insurance companies, and so on) to discourage investment in PE funds which do not fulfil transparency and worker information/participation requirements and respect the code of conduct.

Agriculture & Nutrition

Countries

Economy

Enterprise

Environment

Ethics

History

Philosophy of Science

Politics

Society