Institutional Investor (March 27)
Private equity funds just have too much money: They are struggling to find potentially profitable investments, can’t sell companies they already own, and are being pressured by exasperated limited partners.” The buyout industry holds “$1.2 trillion in unspent capital… and 24 percent of that total has been held for four years or longer.” Buyout funds are simultaneously “having trouble selling the companies they already own,” with fully “$3.6 trillion of unrealized value in some 29,000 unsold companies in the funds’ portfolios.” The massive overhang “is leading investors to slam shut their pocketbooks to new funds.”
Tags: Buyout industry, Exasperated, Investors, Money, Overhang, Partners, Portfolios, Pressured, Private equity, Profitable investments, Struggling, Unrealized value, Unsold companies, Unspent capital
Washington Post (March 9)
European leaders may “attest to a continent fully awakened to the reality of the war. But the truth is that Europe has not taken its defense seriously before now, and it cannot be strategically ‘autonomous’ until it does.” Home to 450 million people with a $17 trillion GDP, defense spending in excess of $200 billion annually, the EU needs to get its act together. “A strong, autonomous Europe benefits the United States as much as it does Europe itself: Partners working in tandem present a more formidable front against any military threat.”
Tags: $17 trillion, Autonomous, Awakened, Defense, Europe, GDP, Leaders, Partners, Reality, Spending, Strategic, U.S., War
Wall Street Journal (August 11)
Though “artificial intelligence has the potential to reinvent the world, from how businesses operate to the types of jobs people hold to the way wars are fought,” the struggles of IBM’s Watson “suggest that revolution remains some way off.” Currently, “no published research shows Watson improving patient outcomes” while “more than a dozen IBM partners and clients have halted or shrunk Watson’s oncology-related projects” because of its “limited impact on patients.” Often, “the tools didn’t add much value. In some cases, Watson wasn’t accurate.”
Tags: Accurate, AI, Clients, IBM, Impact, Oncology, Partners, Patient outcomes, Potential, Revolution, Struggles, Watson
Bloomberg (May 24)
“More young adults now live with parents than partners. It’s the first time that this has happened in the U.S. in more than 130 years.” Much of the cause is economic, but “millennials and their parents may also simply be more comfortable with living together” than previous generations.
Tags: Economic, Millennials, Parents, Partners, U.S.
Wall Street Journal (May 21)
There’s a reason “why so many countries are open to U.S.-led trade pacts, like TPP and its European counterpart, the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership. History shows the U.S. trade agenda, while far from perfect, has nevertheless provided sizable benefits to its partners.”
