Capital is creeping back to private equity. Over 1,500 funds will be on the road this year, according to research firm Preqin, seeking almost $700bn. Many managers will be touting connections in China, reckoned to represent the best opportunity in the current climate among investors. And yet opportunities for the big global PE funds to import their big global strategies are, and probably always will be, limited.
There are two main reasons why. The first is that China has no shortage of capital. Balance sheet – the calling card of the Blackstones and the Bains – doesn't come into it. PE deals tend to be small, and skewed towards pre-initial public offering growth capital. On Thomson Reuters numbers, China accounted for just under one-third of the $11.3bn in disclosed PE deals in Asia ex-Japan last year. But the average investment was just $13m, less than in Vietnam.
Second is the pervasive influence of economic planners. Fringe sectors such as new media, biotechnology or clean energy – classic seed capital fodder – are wide open for foreign investment. But when it comes to really critical nodes of the economy, the game is dominated by large industrial funds with political backgrounds. It is no accident that, as it has developed, the locus of the domestic PE industry has steadily shifted from technology-focused Shanghai to government-dominated Beijing.