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The history of private equity and venture capital and the development of these asset classes has occurred through a series of boom and bust cycles since the middle of the 20th century. Within the broader private equity industry, two distinct sub-industries, leveraged buyouts and venture capital experienced growth along parallel although interrelated tracks.

Since the origins of the modern private equity industry in 1946, there have been four major epochs marked by three boom and bust cycles. The early history of private equity — from 1946 through 1981 — was characterized by relatively small volumes of private equity investment, rudimentary firm organizations and limited awareness of and familiarity with the private equity industry. The first boom and bust cycle — from 1982 through 1993 — was characterized by the dramatic surge in leveraged buyout activity financed by junk bonds and culminating in the massive buyout of RJR Nabisco before the near collapse of the leveraged buyout industry in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The second boom and bust cycle (from 1992 through 2002) emerged out of the ashes of the savings and loan crisis, the insider trading scandals, the real estate market collapse and the recession of the early 1990s. This period saw the emergence of more institutionalized private equity firms, ultimately culminating in the massive Dot-com bubble in 1999 and 2000. The third boom and bust cycle (from 2003 through 2007) came in the wake of the collapse of the Dot-com bubble—leveraged buyouts reach unparalleled size and the institutionalization of private equity firms is exemplified by the Blackstone Group's 2007 initial public offering.

In its early years through roughly the year 2000, the history of the private equity and venture capital asset classes is best described through a narrative of developments in the United States as private equity in Europe consistently lagged behind the North American industry. With the second private equity boom in the mid-1990s and liberalization of regulation for institutional investors in Europe, the emergence of a mature European private equity market has occurred.

The International Financial Services Centre in Dublin

The economy of the Republic of Ireland is a highly developed knowledge economy, focused on services in high-tech, life sciences, financial services and agribusiness, including agrifood. Ireland is an open economy (3rd on the Index of Economic Freedom), and ranks first for high-value foreign direct investment (FDI) flows. In the global GDP per capita tables, Ireland ranks 2nd of 192 in the IMF table and 4th of 187 in the World Bank ranking. Among OECD nations, Ireland has a highly efficient and strong social security system; social expenditure stood at roughly 13.4% of GDP.

Following a period of continuous growth at an annual level from 1984 to 2007, the post-2008 Irish financial crisis severely affected the economy, compounding domestic economic problems related to the collapse of the Irish property bubble. Ireland first experienced a short technical recession from Q2-Q3 2007, followed by a recession from Q1 2008 – Q4 2009. (Full article...)

"Production Cloning

On the supply side, the ultimate source of a mass winner-take-all market is that the services of the best performers can be reproduced, or "cloned", at low additional cost. For example, once the master recording has been made, it costs no more to transcribe the best soprano's performance onto a compact disc than it does her understudy's. Once the film is in the canister, it costs no more to make an additional print of an Academy Award winner than a B western. Once the television cameras have been set up, it costs no more to broadcast a tennis match between the first- and second-ranked players in the world than it does to broadcast a match between the 101st and 102nd. If the best performers' efforts can be cloned at low marginal cost, there is less room in the market for lower-ranked talents.

More generally, whenever there are economies of scale in production or distribution, there is a natural tendency for one product, supplier, or service to dominate the market. The battle is to determine which one it will be.

Network Economies

On the demand side of many markets, a product becomes more valuable as greater numbers of consumers use it. A vivid illustration is VHS's defeat of the competing Beta format in home video recorders. VHS's defeat of the competing Beta format in home video recorders. VHS's attraction over the initial versions of Beta was that it permitted longer recording times. Thought Beta later corrected this deficiency and on most important technical dimensions came to be widely by experts as superior to VHS, the initial sales advantage of VHS proved insurmountable. Once the number of consumers owning VHS passed a critical threshold, the reasons for choosing it became compelling-variety and availability of tape rentals, access to repair facilities, the capability to exchange tapes with friends, and son on."

—Robert H. Frank, The Winner-Take-All Society, 1995

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June 8:

• 1921 - Gordon McLendon, a radio pioneer and pirate radio broadcaster, was born on this day.

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Wikinews Economy and business portal

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