Dry Powder: The Private Equity Podcast
Previously on Dry Powder, Peder Prahl, CEO and firm managing partner of Triton, shared his thinking on “the era of easy money” and why, at the height of the cycle, Triton chose to slow down fund-raising.
You can listen to this episode of Dry Powder and catch future episodes by subscribing on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you may listen.
Today on the show, I ask Peder how he’s thinking about the so-called new normal—a world of higher interest rates, more constrained leverage, and far greater geopolitical and macroeconomic uncertainty—and why he believes it’s actually a more attractive environment for disciplined investors.
“We had an environment where sellers would only sell if they got more than they expected [in] the era of free money,” Peder says. “Now, we have sellers who have strategic objectives, they have financial objectives, they have personal objectives to realize—so we see that there is a lot more opportunity to buy again.”
We talk about where he’s seeing value dislocation across Europe today, from infrastructure to defense, and how Triton identifies the less obvious second- and third-derivative approaches.
“Now everybody would like to buy a defense company or an infrastructure company,” Peder says, “so we’re looking for new areas that are not so hot right now.”
We also explore Triton’s approach to culture and how they think about fun and profit, in that order.
The Private Equity Podcast
In our podcast series, Bain's Hugh MacArthur interviews leading experts on the trends and opportunities that will redefine the private equity industry.