EVCA launches professional standards handbook

The European Private Equity and Venture Capital Association (EVCA) recently released a handbook that amalgamates all four of its previous professional standard documents.

The handbook covers all the key relationships in private equity, from private equity firm to portfolio company, to investor and throughout the lifetime of a private equity fund, according to a statement from EVCA.

The idea for the handbook stemmed from having reviewed all prior professional standards documents and finding overlaps, said Claire Wilkinson, general counsel at placement agent MVision and member of the EVCA Professional Standards Committee.

“Each document had been produced at a different time by a different set of people with different angles but still climbing up the same professional standards mountain,” she said.

The handbook was drafted in three stages and the composition of the drafting committee varied at each stage but EVCA tried to get an even split between GPs, LPs and a good mix of buyouts and venture capital involved in the process. 

“We wanted something that was about the industry and how GPs and LPs worked as a partnership instead of one faction being against the other,” said Wilkinson. Who added that there was also the need to not make this an English document and that it needed input from a very large component of Europeans to fully reflect the association.