IPEV goes global

IPEV, the International Private Equity and Venture Capital Guidelines Board, has added eight new members and “secured global representation.”
The expansion comes as US general partners prepare for their first fiscal year of reporting under FAS 157 regulations.
Five of the new members are Americans: Stephen Holmes of InterWest Partners, William Franklin of Conversus Asset Management, Bill Hupp of Adams Street Partners, David Larsen of Duff & Phelps, and Michael Maher of US Venture Partners. Franklin is a manging director; Holmes, Hupp and Maher are chief financial officers, and Larsen is a managing director in Duff & Phelps’s financial consulting group.
Two of the new electees are European: Capital Dynamics managing director Katharina Lichtner and Inflexion Private Equity chief operating officer Darren Jordan. Barry Zuckerman, finance director of Australia’s CHAMP Private Equity, rounds out the group. IPEV’s valuation guidelines were issued in March 2005. The guidelines are based on the principle of “fair value,” and are consistent with US GAAP and IFRS. The guidelines have been endorsed by 35 private equity and venture capital associations around the world.
The board has a monitoring role and gives guidance on the application of those guidelines to private equity and venture capital stakeholders.
The majority of the board members are also affiliated with other trade organizations, among them the British,
French, Canadian, European and Australian PE and VC trade bodies.
Holmes and Larsen are also members of the PEIGG (Private Equity Industry Guidelines Group), a US organization that was founded in 2002 to promulgate its own set of fair value standards. The PEIGG standards were last updated in March of 2007. Holmes and Larsen’s addition to the IPEV board comes ahead of a planned review of the IPEV guidelines this year, in which the board plans to more closely align IPEV’s standards with those of PEIGG.
“The objective of this review is to achieve global recognition and application for private equity valuation guidelines,” IPEV said in a statement.
“Valuation of financial instruments has attracted a lot of attention lately,” Larsen says. “Therefore it is fundamental to emphasize that the private equity and venture capital industry has been very proactive toward its investors by developing widely recognized valuation guidelines.”