A research report submitted to the Faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment, University of the Witwatersrand, in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Masters in Engineering, May 2016 / The South African Private Equity Industry collects billions of Rands from investors locally and abroad and
utilises this cash to purchase controlling shares in companies operating within Africa. Within 5 to 10
years of purchase, these companies are purposefully altered, upgraded and moulded prior to resale.
Each Private Equity firm has different growth targets, but the generally expected result should be a
multiplication of the funds invested over that time. The mechanism by which these firms accomplish
such a result was of strategic importance for business people whom wish to decode the route to success
and apply the same actions in their organisations, or those they wish to evaluate for purchase.
This research aims to bridge a particular aspect of this process by acknowledging that the choice of
company to purchase was critical to the overall ability to grow and dispose of the company in the
allotted timeframe. In the run up to purchasing a company, Private Equity will contract external firms to
delve into a potential Target Firm. These Service Firms will report into the Private Equity client on
particular aspects of operations, finance and legality that would affect future running and risk profiles.
These reports would inform the buying decision, potential pricing structures and legalities of ownership
transfer right up to the point of sale.
The evaluation stages are graphically modelled as three distinct but sequential Phases at the end of an
extensive literature review. This Conceptual Model is tested against the results of a series of semistructured
interviews held with industry experts. The opinions of local Private Equity and Service Firm
respondents are sorted, refined and presented as a more detailed Modified Model at the end of the
report. It was found that through substantial refinement of disconnected data, the available literature
largely agreed with expert opinion in practice.
The research concludes that the proposed evaluation Models constitute a useful starting platform from
which to conduct future research into specific aspects of Private Equity activity. / MT2016
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:wits/oai:wiredspace.wits.ac.za:10539/21146 |
| Date | January 2016 |
| Creators | Olivey, Warren |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | Online resource (86 leaves), application/pdf, application/pdf, application/pdf |
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