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Comment by fiprofessor | Hacker News Reader

> Honestly though, I think the good times are over for PE, as most of the industry (and finance in general) has been cushioned by a low interest rate world, and as debt starts to cost real money we're gonna see a _lot_ of these bets unwind.

Maybe the current bets will unwind, but I'm not sure that means there won't be a good time era of another round of bets. After all, interest rates were very high in the 80s, and that was a heyday for PE, right?

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Sure, but that the first day of PE, they had loads of massive conglomerates to strip. Those are all gone now, and the current management structures (except in tech) are hostile to insourcing so there's not as much fat to cut.

Like, definitely some PE firms will survive, but I'm willing to bet (not short though ;) ) that an awful lot of them will go belly-up/be unable to raise more funds in the next 5-10 years.

Big PE firms are now setting up new investment vehicles that specialize in funding big investments of other PE firms. PE firms are starting to invest more and more into equity with their own investors money, thus amount of investments shrink - get more expensive - and the capital needed rises. But I am not sure that this causes more PE firms to close shop on a large scale, but more likely resulting in less transactions being done overall.

Yeah, that looks like an extend and pretend maneuver to me, at least.

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