After being at the receiving end of investors’ wrath, the real estate sector is back on the radar of private equity (PE) investors. Real estate consultants say PE funds are now finding good investment opportunities in the sector. The high level of interest is quite clear in the recent wave of qualified institutional placements from real estate companies. According to Grant Thornton’s deal tracker, Orient Global, Sandstone Capital, HSBC and Och-Ziff Capital recently invested $325 million in Unitech. Standard Chartered Private Equity has pumped in an undisclosed sum in Man Infraconstruction. And TPG Capital and Fidelity have invested in the qualified institutional placement by Indiabulls. […]

Venture capital (VC) firms, that usually invest in early stage companies (also the riskiest), are now trying to stay invested in firms already in their portfolios from earlier funding rounds, with or without co-investors, even as there has been a dip in the overall funding activity. This trend among venture capitalists of funding firms they have already backed before, is partly driven by the high demand for investible firms that venture backers can fund. The paucity of such opportunities has led to VC investors, across the spectrum, eager to get a stake in these firms. Also, existing investors fear that they may soon become minority players in their own portfolio firms, if they don’t extend financial help. At least nine firms in the last five months have received subsequent rounds of funding where their previous investors have also participated. These include: […]