Danielle Fugazy

Mrs. Fugazy is a contributing editor at Mergers & Acquisitions Journal. Prior to joining the publication, she served as the editor of Buyouts Magazine.


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Dare I Say It?

By Danielle Fugazy, MU Blog

May 18, 2009

After debating whether or not I should attend this year’s ACG Intergrowth conference, I decided to go for it and I am glad I did. Although attendance was down slightly compared to last year’s, the event was still packed. The network opportunities were abundant. It was good to catch up with old friends and make news ones—after all that’s what Intergrowth is all about. It almost seemed like the Capital Connection could have been longer.

However, as someone who has attended a good number of ACG chapter events and plenty of Intergrowths mostly for the networking benefit, I have to say I found the actually content of this event to be more insightful than usual. Perhaps it was because I was listening more closely, hoping that someone would reveal what’s going to happen next. Or maybe it was because panelists dug a little deeper, let their guard down a little bit further, and actually tried to answer the questions that are looming. Don’t get me wrong, no one got up there and said that private equity is going to fall off a cliff or admitted that their firm is going out of business, but many panelists acknowledged that private equity is going to see changes that will effect the whole deal making community. No panelists tried to pretend they are immune to today’s troubling market conditions. Panelists spoke about everything from a shrunken asset class with LPs right sizing their allocations to the asset class to portfolios being down more than expected.

I mention it because it was refreshing to hear panelists deviate from the standard "my firm is great" responses that have become tired and overused. I actually learned something listening to the panel discussions and I appreciated the speakers' candidness. Instead of just heaping praise on their peers and their own firms, panelists chose to actually show why they were chosen as speakers in the first place. I hope this is one trend that continues even after every firm goes back to being great.

Thanks.

Danielle Fugazy
danielle.fugazy@sourcemedia.com

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