Star sites

Web sites create first impressions. Right after the CEO of a target company fields that initial phone from a GP, he’s likely to Google the firm and head straight to the web site. Private equity GPs who understand the impression that web sites give therefore devote plenty of time to craft sites that say all the right things.
Some firms, like TPG, prefer to say as little as possible, with a site of just four pages. Other firms boast thousands of pages of material.
Most firms, however, wrestle with how to convey as much as information as possible in a concise enough fashion to be informative without being a headache to navigate.
Last year, PEI Manager reviewed the sites of the PEI 50, the ranking of the fifty largest private equity firms by sister publication Private Equity International. We presented our opinions of the good, the bad and the ugly. This year, we’ve decided to revisit a few of our favorite sites and explain what made them stand out. Our four criteria were ease of navigation, quality of information, quantity of information and overall design. While any such study is subjective, our hope is that our reviews will offer some insights as to what makes a great private equity firm web site as a new age of transparency dawns.
Of special interest: our favorite sites are dominated by UK-based firms. This has less to do with any Anglophile bias on our part, and possibly more to do with the fact that UK firms are beginning to voluntarily open up based on transparency standards set forth in the Walker Report.

The Carlyle Group: What they do, where they do it
www.carlyle.com
Designed by: Silver Oven
Earlier this year when labor activists accosted Carlyle’s communications director Chris Ullman outside of the firm’s New York offices, they shouted questions about the firm’s executives and investments, implying the Washington, DC-based firm remained shrouded in secrecy. Ullman, captured on a YouTube clip, is shown calmly replying that the answers were all to be found on the firm’s web site.
The truth is…Ullman’s right. Answers to almost any Carlyle question can be found on the Carlyle web site. The web site’s real coup is its elegant trio of categories that allow visitors to sort the firm’s activities by fund, by industry and by geography.
“Those categories were designed to be transparent – even to those who may not know much about the asset class,” says Ullman.
Ullman explains that when he first arrived at the firm in 2001, the site was essentially the annual report, posted online. At the time the firm was the subject of several conspiracy theories brought on, perhaps, by a handful of world-renown politicos on staff, by investments in the defense industry, and by some investors who hailed from the Middle East.
“We took a year to launch the site with the real priority of disclosing what we do, and where we do it,” Ullman says. “The end result was over a thousand pages in length, and it’s a project we revisit on a regular basis.”
Beyond the three categories, the underlying pages are clear and readable. Click on “By Industry” and then choose “Automotive & Trans” and the details are laid out in three columns, letting the user choose where to dig further, without having to scroll down for miles.
Ullman made a point to offer a number of options on the contact pages, with a nod to the various reasons someone would visit the site. “The media gets a direct number as do people looking to submit a business proposal,” says Ullman. This speaks to the point that part of a good first impression is making the second one easy to arrange.
Carlyle is currently looking at podcasts and blogging to further upgrade the site.

CVC Capital Partners: Stylish substance
www.cvc.com
Designed by: Salterbaxter
With the blue-tinged X-ray images of race cars and jets, the site from UK-based CVC Capital Partners is one of the most eye-catching, yet the modernist style never muddies the message.
“CVC was looking to create a user-friendly site, so that all stakeholders from investors, journalists and the general public would be able to use it,” explains Richard Dance, chief information officer of the firm.
Certainly most firms aim to be clear for all audiences, but one of the chief innovations of the CVC site involves placing “Our Industry” as one of the tabs on the home page. Click on that, and the viewer gets a single page with a paragraph defining the asset class, links to the trade groups like the BVCA, and a note on disclosure guidelines with links to relevant pages elsewhere on the site. This really acts as a second home page for those who need a more thorough introduction to private equity, remapping the site for nontrade media and the public.
The other facet worth noting is that CVC’s “Our Location” page consists of three distinct maps, showing three continents where the firm has offices. There are drop-down menus atop each map that allow the viewer to which office on that continent they’d like to contact.
The three maps beside each other grant the viewer a snapshot of their geographic reach, while offering a quick way to get desired mailing addresses or phone numbers. One of the consistent challenges for any site design is communicating a broad, compelling message while granting access to greater detail for interested parties.
CVC manages this with no shortage of aplomb.

Cinven: Novel navigation
www.cinven.com
Designed by: Pauffley
The site for UK-based Cinven certainly has an attractive design and thoughtful layout, but its particular accomplishment is a few genuinely creative tools for visitors. Steve Tibble, the firm’s director of communications, explained that because the design firm had been working with them for several years on other branded materials, there was no need to waste the time explaining Cinven’s image. “We were able to focus on what we wanted from the site,” Tibble says.
That focus shows in a unique functionality that Cinven’s peers should envy. On the first page of the “About Us” section the site has a timeline with three paths for three types of milestones: landmark transactions, firm evolution and funding history. The viewer can control the timeline for themselves, shifting back and forth along the path. Timelines aren’t groundbreaking, but divvying them up into categories and offering visitor control conveys the firm’s history in a fresh and memorable way.
The second innovation is that the site allows the visitor to re-sort the information on a given page by category of interest. In Cinven’s
“Our People” section, visitors are able to sort the list of personnel by name, title and duties by clicking on the category. In the “Our Investments” section, the portfolio can be sorted by name of company, deal size and activity – as in, what the company does, sector and date of deal. While hardly cutting-edge either, this sort tool caters
to those that are looking for a specific facet of the firm’s operations.
LPs may look for recent activity, while management of a target may look for other investments in their sector. Such functionality is a superb way to keep multiple constituencies happy.

Permira: Brevity at its best
www.permira.com
UK-based Permira’s site exhibits simplicity and sophistication. The site has one of the cleanest home pages we viewed, with only the logo, one paragraph and nine numbered categories across the top.
The site is deceptively sparse, evident as soon as a visitor clicks on a given category. Click on the number 6, and the visitor finds a table of the firm’s portfolio, that they can sort by name, year, description, sector, description and geography.
Permira’s chief innovation is the savvy mix of the categories one would expect from a private equity firm, like investment criteria, people and investments, along with sections that speak more broadly about the firm. For example, category 5 discusses sector focus, explaining the opportunity the firm feels each industry offers, along with links to relevant portfolio companies. The “Why Permira?” section distills the facts found elsewhere in the site on history, track record, investments and people into a concise argument on behalf of the firm that never veers into vague slogans, a rarity for pages like this one.
In fact, we found that the web site’s stark design would have been impossible to pull off if not for the quality of the writing, among the best of its kind.
The text on nebulous aspects of the business like “strategy” is coupled with concrete examples.
When they talk about working with a fund’s investments, they include a fact like this one: “[We advised on] the simultaneous acquisition and demerger of a Scandinavian software group – and within 2 years the float or sale of all 3 demerged entities.” All too often firms resort to generic phrases as “adding value” or “building businesses” that are so cliché they become meaningless. The writing is specific here, not bulky. Permira demonstrates what great text can accomplish.

Terra Firma: Talent in the telling
www.terrafirma.com
Designed By: Dusted Design Partners
UK-based Terra Firma Capital Partners turned heads this quarter by issuing an annual report with a level of detail to rival that of a public company. Such commitment to disclosure is evident from the firm’s web site, though the site grabbed our attention for how its information is parceled out, managing to address both the LP and the general public with equal grace. “The biggest thing for us is to balance the content as we’ve got more than one audience,” explains Peter Cornell, the managing director of stakeholder relations.
The site’s “About Terra Firma” section is divided into two subcategories: “Private Equity Investment,” which briefly defines the asset class, and “Our Approach is Different,” which delves into what makes the firm unique. This system manages to educate the novice to private equity, while making the firm’s case to those within the industry.
The firm also respects the varying perspectives of visitors with a comprehensive “Investor Relations” section that includes pages describing their current investors, the alignment of interest, the IR team and testimony from a current LP. Their “Our People” section is more than a series of bios, but includes testimony from an employee and a page for those looking to join the firm. Tailoring categories specifically to investors or potential hires doesn’t always work, but Terra Firma broke up the categories with enough care that a target company’s CEO won’t be clicking the page to submit a CV in order to learn about the firm’s portfolio. One of web designers’ biggest challenges is organizing the information in a way that the viewer finds what they’re looking for, and not much more. Terra Firma’s site does that very thing.