A few days back a couple of Private Equity houses confessed that a large number of their long-term acquisition targets had fallen to levels where valuations were now of great interest. Advent, for one, claimed it was not looking to make 'predatory' offers, but would offer a fair price. We will wait and see on that!

So my first point is that we as PIs should be wary of taking a short-term view when an offerror wades in with a decent premium to current depressed prices.Arguably one of the ways PE firms make their generally very strong returns is by looking through an economic cycle more than does the market as a whole.

Secondly, today's FT reports that the UK Govt, (in the shape of the Culture Secretary!) has managed to foil an attempted takeover of Imagination Technologies(formerly £IMG) by the Chinese. Imagination, which was taken private by a US PE firm in November 2017, is clearly a strategic asset.We should be very wary of Chinese buyers acquiring our key companies in coming months.

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