Natural evolution

Welcome to Private Funds Management, or PFM, as we like to call it.

You’re likely to have noticed the changes made to our website and email deliveries since last week, and aside from the new title, there’s a few other important (and exciting!) changes happening to the publication.

In our previous incarnation as PE Manager, we focused on the issues and challenges faced by finance and operations professionals working within private equity. But when we spoke to the equivalent professionals at other kinds of private funds, one thing soon became very clear: many of their issues and challenges were exactly the same.

Whether your remit is private equity, real estate, private debt, or infrastructure – or some combination of all four – you’re still going to worry about compliance challenges like FATCA and AIFMD; you’re still going to worry about how best to value what are often illiquid assets; and you’re still going to worry about general management issues like human capital, budgeting and fund administration.

That’s why we’re expanding our own remit. Instead of speaking just to private equity professionals, from now on we intend to address our coverage to all private fund CFOs, COOs, and CCOs, plus their external advisors and anyone else that plays a part in the successful management of a private investment firm.

Of course, we recognize that there are important nuances between the challenges facing the different asset classes. So we’re expanding our editorial team and coverage to dig into some of those details.

In doing so, we like to think that (in our own small way) we’re evolving a bit like the industry has done. Pure-play private equity shops are increasingly diversifying into new areas like debt and real estate, which means that CFOs, COOs and other private fund professionals are now responsible for advising a wider spectrum of investment vehicles. Understanding the subtleties between the different asset classes, at least from an operational, finance and administrative point of view, is thus becoming a more common job requirement amongst our readership.

What certainly won’t change, however, is the level of coverage, analysis and insight that long-time readers of PEM have come to expect. But if you’re one of our traditional readers whose firm is flirting with the idea of jumping into a new asset class, we aim to continue being your one-stop resource for all the latest intelligence and analysis on running a successful private investment firm.

(PS – We hope you enjoy the new look and feel of the publication as much as we do. So as always, feel free to send your feedback to PFM editor Nicholas Donato at nicholas.d@peimedia.com)