PEWlive: Shining a light on 2021 tech trends Private Equity Wire’s Technology Summit kicked off on Wednesday, a two-day event that looked at how digitisation and the adoption of new technologies are shaping the world of private equity and some of the future trends in private equity tech. The event's first panel, ‘Future Trends in PE Technology’, saw Ron Biscardi, Jamie Smith, Sophie Flak, Jed Gardner and Eric Feldman discuss some of the most salient trends emerging in PE and tech, which was followed by a data analytics panel. The second panel of the day went on to cover how the need for quick execution in the secondaries space could be the reason you would win a deal or not today, according to Tobias True, partner at Adams Street Partners. In the same panel Sajjad Jaffer, senior director at West Monroe Partners, mentioned the importance of value creation when it comes to a deal that could have been a 2x exit, and instead turning it into a clear path towards a 5x return. This week’s feature by Alex Di Santo, group head of private equity at Crestbridge, looks at some of the factors that are driving growth within the VC space. According to Di Santo, now is a good time to raise assets – which will more than double for the private equity and venture capital space by 2025. Already the largest alternatives asset class, Preqin’s latest report shows that VC and PE combined will now represent more than half of all alternatives by 2025. This means the sector will more than double its assets from the current USD4.4 trillion at the end of 2020, to USD9.1 trillion by 2025. Meanwhile, the SPAC trend shows no sign of abating. Last year proved to be an outstanding year for SPACs in the US, while the total number of SPACs already surpassed the 2019 total in the first three weeks of 2021 alone, according to data published by Finnish investment fund Sijoitusrahastot. Their research found that 248 SPACS raised around USD83 billion in the US in 2020 - a figure that was almost double the USD47 billion that SPACS have raised in the previous 10 years combined. Karin Wasteson Editor, Private Equity Wire
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