The Private Equity Edge: How Private Equity Players and the World's Top Companies Build Value and Wealth

by Arthur Laffer, William Hass, IV,Shepherd G. Pryor

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Editorial Reviews
Product Description

The world is changing and has never been more challenging to private equity players, public companies, and investors. With record market volatility and a global economic crisis, decision makers of all types can learn from successful private equity players and other top value builders.

Private equity is growing at a rapid rate, with $2.7 trillion in transactions since 2001 and buyouts occurring in every type of market, including declining ones. And now, with the end of investment banks as we know them, the door is open to more opportunities than ever.

In The Private Equity Edge, economics giant Arthur B. Laffer, along with value-building experts William J. Hass and Shepherd G. Pryor IV, combines the concepts of intrinsic value, macroeconomics, and incentives into a single strategy used by today’s top value builders. You’ll learn how to create value while reducing risk by:

Thoroughly exploring relevant data to quantify ranges of value and risk
Anticipating reactions of those whom you seek to influence
Exploring possibilities and options before making major decisions
Employing incentive systems that work in both up and down markets

Examples of major private equity players at Blackstone, KKR, Carlyle, Cerberus, and Madison Dearborne Partners illustrate what to do and what to avoid in specific situations.

Decision makers seeking to take full advantage of the new, interconnected world of business and economics will learn how to make the best decision the first time around, quickly and with conviction—the key to seizing the private equity edge.

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All Customer Reviews
Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5 out of 5 stars

An Insightful Work, 2010-01-27
I found the Private Equity Edge to be insightful with useful nuggets of wisdom about how to increase the value of a company based on the traits of institutional investors. The book is written from an economics perspective and supports its arguments with a wealth of data. This is a good read for those that desire to look at value creation top-down from a macro view. Nice Job! by Kenneth H Marks, lead author of the The Handbook of Financing Growth: Strategies, Capital Structure, and M&A Transactions (Wiley Finance)

0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5 out of 5 stars

Thorough book from 3 heavy hitters, 2010-01-24
This is not a skim and go book. It is thorough and tackles complex topics, not snappy, simple solutions and generalities. Worth the effort.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

2 out of 5 stars

Disappointing, 2009-10-13
I was quite disappointed that 3 such illustrious authors managed to put together such a mediocre tome.

The book shows little cohesion between chapters and goes back and forth between anecdotal evidence on success or failure of various businesses with some tenuous links to private equity and high-brow macro-economic chapters whose purpose and positioning is not always clear.

It is almost as if each of the 3 authors wrote their own book and then a (not very good) editor wove the 3 (or at least 2) strands together into one book.

3 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

3 out of 5 stars

1/3 Business Platitudes, 1/3 Ridiculous Political Opinion, and 1/3 Useful information, 2009-08-23
This book should have been half the length it was or else they could have expanded on what makes the better Private Equity firms stick out, with more in-depth case studies. Instead they use platitude such as, "Top Value Producers react quicker" and say things such as the Crash of 2008 was caused by Ben Bernanke not considering the monetary levels of the U.S. (these are paraphrases as I couldn't be bothered to look up their exact wording) as well as endless hype of the now completely ignored and rejected "theory" of supply-side economics. I knew with Laffer as the main author (who based on the anecdotes in this book can do no wrong) there would be liberal helpings of his own theories, but this was a bit much. I found myself literally skipping over 5-10 pages at a time. At best, this is a book which will provide you a mediocre understanding of what separates PE firms from public companies.

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5 out of 5 stars

The Private Equity Edge, 2009-06-17
The Private Equity Edge is a very unique busines book which should apeal to business leaders,investors and all those interested in business wealth creation, corporate governance, setting appropiate business incentives & goals, compensation, and general economic issues including tax policies, economic risk and the impact of Federal Reserves policies on the economy. The book is well written and easy to understand and incorporates over 100 years of business experience by the authors. What is truely amazing is the breath of knowledge by the authors. Key take aways include:
- How is economic value created
- Consideration of the "people effect" in all decisions
- The impact of taxe rates on all economic activity and corporate value
- The importance to aline incentives with business goals to have good outcomes
- The importance of Cash Flows, Capital Investment,and cash returns exceeding the cost of capital to creat wealth & value
- Stock prices do not produce normal distributions
- Causes of the 2007 economic collapse
- 100's of real life business examples of value creation & distruction

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