View from the C-suite: What issues keep you awake at night?

CFOs and CEOs from seven mid-market firms answer the key questions facing their industry.

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OUR MID-MARKET PANEL

Nathan Brown
(Managing Director – Wind Point Partners)

Omar Hassan
9Principal and CFO – Cloverlay)

Heramb Ramachandran
(CFO – XPV Water Partners)

Brian Ramsay
(President – Littlejohn & Co)

Alex Slusky
(Founder and CIO – Vector Capital)

Béla Szigethy
(Co-CEO – The Riverside Company)

Ted Virtue
(CEO – MidOcean Partners)

What issues keep you awake at night?

Brian Ramsay: The biggest risks to deals and portfolio companies right now are geopolitical. The ever-widening political divide in the US and many other countries is fuelling alarming policy initiatives from both ends of the political spectrum. While we have contingency plans in place, we are obviously limited in our ability to mitigate these risks.

Béla Szigethy: With a broad portfolio, lots of folks tending to their own companies, somebody doing something stupid along the way is always a concern. Compliance-related issues and headline risks can really hurt an investment.

Nathan Brown: We’re benefiting from this strong market, so we’re currently sleeping well! We have tried to build a portfolio that will perform well in a recession, so that we can continue to sleep well. But each recession has different characteristics and it likely will provide challenges that keep us up at night when it comes.

Alex Slusky: Rarely does a month go by when I don’t read about another large pool of capital increasing its allocation to private equity. They look at how PE has outperformed other asset classes over the last 20 years. This flood of money is depressing returns and distorting incentives across the entire industry.