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• Central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) are already operating in the Bahamas and being trialled in China. They will be introduced by many countries over the next five years.
• CBDCs enjoy the crucial advantage of total security, because a central bank can't go broke. But, in order to achieve broad acceptance, CBDCs also need to be cheaper or faster or more efficient or more private or more convenient than the alternatives.
• CBDCs differ from other cashless payment instruments such as credit transfers, direct debit, stablecoins, or cryptocurrencies, because they are "government money", being direct liabilities of the central banks. Issuing this "extra currency" involves costs, but CBDCs also allow central banks to see real-time transactions, create audit trails, monitor criminal activities, and prevent money laundering.
• Although an Australian CBDC is unlikely in the near future, the technology is evolving rapidly, and may have important effects on the global financial system.

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INTRODUCTION

We've all heard of digital currencies like Bitcoin, Dogecoin, and other cryptocurrencies. What most people haven't noticed is that the world's central banks are planning to issue their own digital currencies. In fact, China has already been trialling digital renminbi on its unsuspecting citizens. What will central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) mean for banks, payment systems, and national economies?

CBDCs differ from other cashless payment instruments such as credit transfers, direct debit, stablecoins, or cryptocurrencies, because they are "government money", being direct liabilities of the central banks. Issuing this "extra currency" involves costs, but CBDCs also allow central banks to see real-time transactions, create audit trails, monitor criminal activities, and prevent money laundering.

Central banks had been quietly pondering CBDCs for several years, but most of them kept their ideas under wraps for fear of confusing their political masters. The world's parliaments are largely composed of middle-aged white men who know less about online phenomena than their teenage kids do. Until two years ago, talking about CBDCs would simply confuse the politicians.

The turning point came in June 2019 when Facebook unveiled its plan for a global digital currency called "Libra" (as in the tampon). Libra was to be a blockchain-based currency operating under Swiss regulation, which could be used in any country and also for money transfers between countries. In order to avoid the wild fluctuations in value which we have seen in Bitcoin and other crypto-currencies, Libra was to be a "stablecoin", which meant that its value was to be based on a fund of actual currencies and US government bonds.

Unfortunately or not, Facebook completely screwed up the launch of Libra. Management was not prepared for the regulatory requirements, even for such basic issues as talking to the Swiss regulator (that speaks 4 languages, in addition to English), incorporating privacy protections, and complying with anti-money-laundering rules.

More importantly, the company was totally deluded about its reputation in the eyes of US politicians and the US public. Questioning by US congressmen was mostly very hostile, making it abundantly clear that Facebook was neither liked nor trusted. No, really. Politicians in other countries expressed similar criticisms of Libra and Facebook. In response, the company announced in September 2019 that it would not launch Libra anywhere in the world until it had gained approval from US regulators.

This public relations disaster saw the departure of some of Facebook's key partners, extensive re-design of Libra (including basing it on the US dollar alone), the renaming of Libra as "Diem", and the indefinite deferral of any launch.

For central banks, however, it now became possible - even desirable! - for them to talk about their plans for digital currencies. A new sense of urgency also came from the Chinese central bank's announcement in October 2019 that it had been developing a digital renminbi since 2014, and would start public trials in April 2020.

 

TRIALLING CHINA'S DIGITAL RENMINBI

China's central bank has not yet finalized the design of its digital renminbi, which is also known as the e-CNY (for electronic Chinese yuan) or DCEP (for Digital Currency and Electronic Payment).

DCEP is intended to simplify retail and wholesale digital transactions and inter-bank settlements, with the added aim of reducing money laundering, gambling, corruption, and terrorism financing. The DCEP technology will allow users to transfer money by touching each other's phones, regardless of whether they are connected to the internet. But the DCEP will operate entirely through the banking system - Chinese individuals and companies will not have accounts at the central bank.

DCEP will certainly not undermine the Chinese banking system. The four biggest banks, with about 40% market share, are not only State-owned but also play essential roles in the Chinese government's fiscal and monetary policy mechanisms. DCEP will employ encryption which will allow users to carry out transactions without identifying themselves to merchants. The Chinese authorities may also choose to pay some salaries or benefits in DCEP, and they may require some taxes to be paid in DCEP.

According to the central bank, DCEP is not intended to replace cash completely, or to supersede the two privately-owned digital payments systems, Alipay and WeChat Pay, which are used by more than 90% of China's population. The two systems are operated by the tech giants Alibaba and Tencent respectively. These systems are able to collect detailed data on all users and their transactions, then to analyse this data in order to market other products to them.

Although the central bank has said that DCEP will not replace Alipay and WeChatPay, the owners of these two payment systems know very well that they are being targeted. China's financial regulators have spent the last three years bringing both payments systems very firmly under government control in terms of settling, reporting, and reserving.

In 2021 the regulators forced the parent companies to become fully regulated financial holding companies, which meant that they had to clean up their activities, and also to divest a number of lucrative peripheral businesses which they had started in recent years. In addition, Alibaba and Tencent have "given" DCEP access to the details of their hundreds of millions of users. China's tech giants will do exactly what the Party tells them to do, and they WILL do so with visible enthusiasm (cue the enthusiasm, please).

The Chinese central bank will be able to see and record all account balances and all transactions for every DCEP unit, and the resulting economy-wide picture will give it a fine-grained, real-time view of macro and micro trends. It will, however, apply the principle of "controllable anonymity" to sharing this information. Participating banks and merchants will only be able to see transactions in which they are involved, and they will not be permitted to retain their part of the transaction data for any longer than needed.

The DCEP will eventually be used for cross-border payments, once all the kinks have been ironed out of its domestic operations. For example, it is not yet clear how overseas DCEP users could make purchases in China, or what DCEP access would be given to foreigners visiting China. (See Chorzempa 2021.) But China's central bankers have been at pains to stress that, although DCEP may eventually facilitate the internationalization of the renminbi, it is not intended to compete with the US dollar as a means of international transactions or a global reserve currency. These functions depend on long-term factors such as capital export controls, trade volumes, available swap lines, user preferences, and relative volatility, which are mostly outside government control. (See Zhou 2021.)

 

THE FIRST CBDC IS ALREADY UP AND RUNNING

The Bahamas launched its Sand Dollar on 20 October 2020 after ten months of trials. The new digital currency is not a stablecoin or a cryptocurrency. It is issued as a liability of the Central Bank of the Bahamas, equivalent to the existing paper currency and backed by the same reserves as the paper currency. It is open to wholesale and retail use by all banks, merchants, and payments providers operating in the Bahamas, although prohibited from acceptance by non-domestic payees.

The transactions trail is fully auditable and will be monitored for fraud prevention and criminal activities, but user confidentiality will be preserved by strict regulatory standards. Holdings of Sand Dollars by individuals, businesses, and non-supervised financial institutions are subject to size restrictions, so that the Sand Dollar does not operate as a close substitute for traditional bank deposits. Circuit breakers will be used to prevent systemic failures or bank runs. (See Central Bank of the Bahamas 2019.)

The Bahamas is over-endowed with banks, but most of them do not cater to the local population of 389,000, who are scattered across more than 700 islands. GDP per head is USD$27,000 (about half of Australia's), with a sharp division between rich and poor. The Sand Dollar is intended to:

• Encourage financial inclusion, with a minimum of basic deposit and checking facilities for individuals and point-of-sale terminals for businesses
• Reduce the fees which payments providers charge merchants
• Support offline functionality
• Improve delivery of government services, such as pensions
• Improve financial literacy
• Prevent money laundering and tax evasion
• Be usable on digital wallets and mobile phone apps
• Provide real-time monitoring of banks' transactions and liquidity.

The Sand Dollar could be described as cash without the anonymity. Its use is also subject to some restrictions which are intended to reduce systemic risk and protect financial stability. Its economic function is similar to the effect which the spread of mobile phones had in many under-developed countries, where they improved national connectivity quickly and cheaply by skipping the traditional step of building a landline network.

 

POLICY CONSIDERATIONS

For the next few years, CBDCs will be in the design and testing stage. Their parent central banks know that they enjoy the crucial advantage of total security, because a central bank can't go broke, whereas any privately-owned bank may default at any time. (Remember how the GFC took down Lehman, Bear Stearns, Wachovia, ABN Amro, Royal Bank of Scotland, Northern Rock, and many more banks?). But, in order to achieve broad acceptance, CBDCs also need to be cheaper or faster or more efficient or more private or more convenient than the alternatives. (See Brainard 2020.)

CBDCs also bring new risks for financial stability. For example, they may be so attractive that they begin to replace bank deposits, thereby depriving banks of a vital source of funds. They may crowd out cash in retail transactions, and thereby limit the choices of the poor, rural, and elderly, as has been happening in China. Because CBDCs can be moved from account to account almost instantaneously, they could trigger a run on a bank, or even a run on the currency. Thanks to Facebook's PR disaster, many governments are now legitimately worried that their money supply and payments system - as well as their citizens' personal data - may one day fall under the control of some foreign technology company. (See Panetta 2021.)

Two weeks ago, Fed Governor Lael Brainard set out some of the major policy considerations which need to be taken into account when designing a CBDC:

• Preserve general access to safe central bank money
• Improve efficiencies in payments, clearing, and settlements
• Lower transaction costs
• Promote competition and diversity
• Reduce cross-border frictions
• Complement (rather than replace) existing currency and bank deposits
• Preserve financial stability and monetary policy transmission
• Protect privacy and safeguard financial integrity
• Increase financial inclusion.

No matter how a CBDC is designed, it will have to be written into a country's legislation regarding the central bank, legal tender, and the banking system. This task will be neither quick nor easy.

What regulators will not do is to give legal tender status to unregulated stablecoins or crypto-currencies, because if these become legal tender, they may be hoarded or suddenly transferred, which would make it possible for financial stability risk to be concentrated in issuers or holders whose operations, cash flows, and balance sheets are not visible to the authorities. That means the regulators might have to deal with "a run on the bank" when it didn't even know there was a bank, let alone that it was in trouble. (See Brainard 2021.)

 

DESIGN FEATURES OF CBDCS

China's DCEP and the Bahamas' Sand Dollar are not the only ways to run a CBDC. For example, both are designed as an account-based, centralized ledger with total visibility for the purpose of preventing money-laundering and other crimes. A CBDC could also be designed as a token-based, anonymous transaction tool, offering the same level of privacy as cash. (See Bache 2021.) To Chinese policymakers, a CBDC is a means of resisting the dominance of the two tech giants Alibaba and Tencent in the payments system.

CBDCs may be retail (for everyone) or wholesale (big users only). A retail CBDC may operate through the banking system, like China's, or it may interface directly with consumers and companies, allowing them to own accounts at the central bank. A wholesale CBDC would be restricted to wholesale users (such as banks) who will use them for inter-bank transfers of large sums, or for their reserve accounts at the central bank. (See Estenssoro 2021.)

A CBDC may be subject to complete centralized control, like China's, or it may be run as a distributed ledger ("blockchain"), perhaps with partial oversight and selective permissioning in order to restrict its use for illegal activities. No central bank is likely to issue a CBDC which is purely based on a distributed ledger (blockchain), because this would lack the essential functions of transparency and control.

Would a CBDC pay interest to its holders? Of course, cash does not pay interest, but there may be reasons why a retail CBDC would do so. A CBDC which paid negative interest (i.e. its value decreased the longer it was owned) would contain a powerful incentive to be spent sooner rather than later. For a wholesale CBDC, however, the issuing central bank might pay variable rates of interest when it wished to incentivize banks to hold CBDC deposits or reserves rather in alternative forms.

It is unlikely that CBDCs will be used for cross-border transactions in the near future, because of the legal and administrative difficulties. Any cross-border CBDC would have to meet the regulatory obligations of every jurisdiction where it was used. Because these obligations can differ widely from country to country, the regulatory burden would be considerable. The same goes for the administrative requirements of each country's payment systems. Any cross-border CBDC would have to interface perfectly with payment systems on both sides.

There are two forms of cross-border CBDC which might be adopted relatively early. The first is a CBDC which was restricted to central banks only: it might be adopted by a small group of countries, with its acceptance widening over time. The second is what Facebook still hopes to do with Libra/Diem: a CBDC which handles small-value international transfers such as the remittances of migrant workers. Such a CBDC would need regulatory approval of the sending and receiving countries, but it could be hedged around with restrictions to prevent domestic use, money laundering, and criminal activities. This "remittance CBDC" would fill a market gap, because current global payments systems charge 5% to 7% commission on small remittances.

 

HOW FAR BEHIND ARE OTHER CENTRAL BANKS?

At present, more than fifty central banks are researching the costs and benefits associated with issuing their own CBDCs. (See Boar and Wehrli 2021.) Few of them have made their research public, but the European Central Bank (ECB) set out its ideas in detail last year. (See ECB 2020.) The ECB described seven scenarios under which a digital Euro (e-euro) would be worth creating:

• enhanced digital efficiency in the monetary and payments system
• a decline in the role of cash as a means of payment, which adversely affected vulnerable groups
• providing leading-edge functionality to compete with other currencies or other payments systems
• a tool to improve the transmission of monetary policy
• a backup system to cope with cyberattacks or natural disasters
• to improve access to the euro outside the euro zone
• reducing the cost of the payments system, or to be more environmentally friendly.

The ECB's retail euro would be legal tender, operating through banks and other authorised intermediaries. Protecting privacy would be important, subject to the trade-off against identifying money laundering, tax evasion, and other criminal activities. The amounts which individuals and businesses could hold in their accounts would be limited in size. Initially at least, the e-euro would be restricted to EU residents, with the possibility of short-term exemptions and later expansion.

The ECB does leave open the possibility of allowing "bearer e-euros" which would not require the usual identification by users. It also considers the possibility of issuing two types of e-euro: one would be used for basic transactions, offline as well as online, while the other would function as a policy instrument carrying a variable (and potentially negative) interest rate.

 

WHAT WILL HAPPEN WHEN THE RESERVE BANK OF AUSTRALIA CREATES ITS OWN CBDC?

Last year the Reserve Bank of Australia ("RBA") published a short paper outlining the issues associated with a CBDC. (See Richards 2020 and Richards et al. 2020.) The paper concluded that CBDCs were a solution for problems that did not exist in Australia. We already have financial inclusivity, in that almost all Australians have transaction accounts and the means to execute online transactions via mobile phones, credit cards, etc. The current payments system is efficient, relatively cheap, and open to new players. The other policy considerations listed by The US Federal Reserve's Governor Brainard are not material issues in Australia. So Australia's big four banks need not worry about CBDCs in the next few years.

The RBA indicated that it would continue to monitor developments in the global CBDC space, and that it would not hesitate to introduce a CBDC if there were compelling reasons. The RBA paper did discuss some of the design choices for an Australian CBDC. Preliminary indications are:

• A retail CBDC with a "very significant" role for the private sector
• Account-based, token-based, or a hybrid?
• Capable of handling payments in person, online, and offline
• Probably not using a blockchain platform
• Privacy, but not as anonymous as cash
• Restrictions on holdings, for reasons of financial stability
• Unlikely to pay interest.

 

CONCLUSION

The digitization of money has only just begun. It will take at least five years before we will have realistic assessments of what works and what doesn't. The design choices which central banks make in their digital currencies will eventually affect all the players in the financial system. Arminius Capital will provide regular updates on significant developments.

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REFERENCES

Bache, Ida Wolden. 2021. Fintech, Big Tech, and Cryptos - will new technology render banks obsolete? Oslo: Norges Bank. Speech 11 May 2021.

Boar, Condruta and Wehrli, Andreas. 2021. Ready, steady, go? - Results of the third BIS survey on central bank digital currency. Basel: Bank for International Settlements. BIS Paper 114.

Brainard, Lael. 2021. Private Money and Central Bank Money as Payments Go Digital: an Update on CBDCs. Washington DC: US Federal Reserve. Speech 24 May 2021.

Brainard, Lael. 2020. The Digitalization of Payments and Currency: Some Issues for Consideration. Washington DC: US Federal Reserve. Speech 05 Feb 2020.

Brunnermeier, Markus K., James, Harold, and Landau, Jean-Pierre. 2021. The Digitalization of Money. Basel: Bank for International Settlements. BIS Working Paper 941.

Central Bank of the Bahamas. 2019. Project Sand Dollar: A Bahamas Payments System Modernization Initiative. Nassau: Central Bank of the Bahamas.

Chorzempa, Martin. 2021. Testimony to US-China Economic and Security Review Commission. Panel 4: China's Pursuit of Leadership in Digital Currency. Washington DC: Peter G. Peterson Institute of International Economics.

Estenssoro, Amalia. 2021. Central Bank Digital Currencies: Back to the Future. St Louis: Federal Reserve Bank of St Louis.

European Central Bank. 2020. Report on a Digital Euro. Frankfurt: European Central Bank.

Panetta, Fabio. 2021. Evolution or revolution: the impact of a digital Euro on the financial system. Frankfurt: European Central Bank. Speech 10 February 2021.

Richards, Tony. 2020. Retail Central Bank Digital Currency: Design Considerations, Rationales, and Implications. Sydney: Reserve Bank of Australia. Speech 14 October 2020.

Richards, Tony, et al. 2020. "Retail Central Bank Digital Currency: Design Considerations, Rationales, and Implications." Reserve Bank Bulletin, September 2020. Sydney: Reserve Bank of Australia.

Zhou, Xiaochuan. 2021. The Digital Currency and Electronic Payment System. Beijing: Tsinghua PBSCF Global Finance Forum. Speech 22 May 2021.

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There is a long held ideal that when investing in equities, the level of volatility is correlated to the return; the more risk you put on the table the greater the return you expect to get back. Of course, the amount of time invested also needs to be considered, but for investments over 3 years (and beyond) this ideal is generally accepted, as evidenced by the number of scatter graphs used in fund marketing material.

Volatility is managed by fund managers in several different ways, but generally it comes down to portfolio construction. The number of stocks in the portfolio, the size of the position held in each stock (and sector), and the buy and sell triggers, all affect the volatility of the portfolio.

Typically, the funds management industry uses Standard Deviation as a measure of volatility. Standard Deviation measures the dispersion of monthly returns both above, and below the average monthly return. The smaller the funds standard deviation, the less volatile it is. The larger the standard deviation, the more dispersed the returns are and the more volatile it is.

But does this show through in data, and is past volatility any sort of indicator of how a manager should have performed?

We have looked at the returns and standard deviation over the past 3 and 5 years of all Long Only Australian Equity Funds (107 funds) on the www.fundmonitors.com database and broken these into quintile rankings. The funds with the best performance fall into the 5th quintile (best) and funds with the lowest standard deviation fall into the 5^th quintile (best).

Looking at the data over 3 years as at the end of May 2021:

• Of the 22 funds that made up the 5^th quintile for performance, only 9 of them were in the 1^st quintile for standard deviation, showing that strong performance does not require higher standard deviation.
• One of the funds in the 5^th quintile for performance was also in the 5^th quintile for standard deviation and 4 of the funds were in the 4^th quartile for standard deviation.
• At the other end of the spectrum, only 6 the funds in the 1^st quintile (22 funds) for performance (worst performers) were in the 5^th quintile for standard deviation showing that standard deviation and return are not correlated over this timeframe.

Running the data over 5 years shows that standard deviation and return become slightly more correlated:

• 12 of the 19 funds in the 5^th quintile for performance were also in the 1^st or 2^nd quintile for standard deviation.
• For funds in the 5^th quintile for performance the average 5-year performance was 16.14% p.a. and the average standard deviation was 19.03% p.a.
• For the funds in the 1^st performance quintile the average 5-year performance was 6.48% p.a. and but the average standard deviation was quite high at 15.27% p.a.

Clearly, while there is some minor correlation in this data, the ideal of using standard deviation as a measure of manager skill, especially in isolation, is not a prudent investment conclusion. Investors and advisors should be looking at multiple risk data points such as Sharpe Ratio, Sortino Ratio, Up and Down Capture and Downside Deviation, to help them make the most effective investment decisions.

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The value creation that Private Equity can bring to businesses, by contributing expertise across strategy, M & A and process enhancement is well documented and particularly applicable to private family or founder owned companies. This value creation comes when growth is accelerated through customer expansion, operational efficiencies are improved,  cost are reduced,  IT systems are implemented and additional talent is employed.  In an analysis of the US Private Equity mid-market, Adams Street Partners found that over 70% of value creation either came from revenue growth or multiple expansion largely as a result of business process enhancement, as opposed to value growth through financial engineering or debt leverage, which is often the perception of how value is created.

What is possibly more important but less well-documented is the value that is created through the "art of the exit": being able to determine the right time to sell and identifying the best method of selling a company to maximise investor returns. 

There is a common misconception that the primary source of equity release or exit from a private equity fund's portfolio comes from an Initial Public Offerings (IPO) and listing on a public share market, which was predominately the case in the late 1990's and early to mid 2000's where there were a number of high profile Private Equity IPO exits that generated significant returns for private equity investors.

However, there are at least three main methods of equity release that Private Equity fund managers consider when planning to exit a business, often years in advance of the actual exit outcome:

 

1. IPO: by listing a company on a public exchange, a seller can often achieve an optimal pricing outcome by removing the discount that is typically applied to unlisted business valuations.  Further premiums can be achieved by listing when equity markets are more buoyant making timing an important decision.  As attractive as IPO's may seem, one drawback to an IPO as the primary source of an exit for Private Equity backed businesses is that IPO windows, that is those periods where public investor appetite exists to buy new listing opportunities, can rapidly close and we have seen this occur recently with a number of high profile IPO's being withdrawn due to a reduced level of support from brokers and their clients.  Another drawback can be that after listing, sellers need to retain equity in the listed company which introduces market risk that is not desirable for most private equity investors.
2. Trade sale: Selling to a larger or listed company often in the same industry sector who may be looking to expand their existing operations to other geographic regions or to add to their existing product or service offerings.  These exits can attract premiums in situations where the purchaser is listed and trading at a higher earnings multiple thus gets an automatic uplift through multiple arbitrage.  Alternatively, there are private buyers who may be prepared to pay a premium for a business that provides a strategic platform to launch a new growth initiatives.
3. Secondary Sale to a global private equity fund or institutional investor: These exits often occur where an acquirer is looking to either achieve a long term yield on the dividends from an acquired company or otherwise seek to expand the existing companies offerings to an expanded global market.

 

Private equity managers add significant value when it is time to sell / exit a portfolio company by allowing the company's executives to remain focussed on growing the business while the private equity managers utilise their expertise to pinpoint the right method and time to achieve the best price for the sale of the business.

In this article we will look at examples of some recent exits from the Vantage's Private Equity Growth Fund portfolios (VPEG2 & VPEG3) to illustrate how Vantage's private equity managers are able to generate significant returns for Vantage Fund investors:

1. IPO: Lynch Group

During April 2021, VPEG2 underlying fund Next Capital Fund III, completed the fully underwritten bookbuild for the IPO of portfolio company Lynch Group. Lynch Group successfully listed on the ASX on 6 April 2021, raising ~$206 million at $3.40 per share. The transaction followed a transformational investment period for the Company across the 5.4 years of ownership by Next Capital.

ynch Group has evolved from predominantly an Australian supermarket wholesale business with a fledgling growing asset in China, to the largest Asian vertically integrated grower and multi-channel wholesaler of cut flowers and potted plants across Australia and China. Next Capital sold ~50% of the fund's shareholding into the IPO. The remaining ~17.0% holding will be in escrow until release of Lynch's audited 1H FY22 financial results in March 2022. This IPO exit delivered Next Capital Fund III and its investors, including VPEG2's investors a strong multiple of invested capital.

2. Trade Sale: MessageMedia

During June 2021, Vantage's VPEG2 & VPEG3 underlying funds Mercury Capital Fund 2 (MCF2) and Fund 3 (MCF3) announced the sale of MessageMedia for USD$1.3 billion (AUD$1.7 billion) to Sinch, a leading global cloud communications business listed on the Nasdaq Sweden. This exit marks an excellent investment for Mercury Capital Fund 2 and Fund 3 and is representative of the strong partnership that Mercury formed with the founder Grant Rule and the management team.

Following MCF2's investment in MessageMedia in August 2018, the business transformed from a primarily Australia and NZ based SMS provider to the leading global Server Message Block (SMB) Customer Engagement platform. MCF3 subsequently made an additional investment in MessageMedia during November 2019, which further supported the business's transformation in rebuilding the management team, consolidating the platform and the successful add-on investment of US-based messaging platform SimpleTexting. Once completed, the sale will deliver MCF2 and 3 investors, including VPEG2 & VPEG3 investors with an exceptionally strong return on investment.

 

3. Secondary Sale to Institutional Investor: iseek

During June 2021, VPEG2 underlying fund Next Capital Fund III announced the sale of iseek, Australia's leading cloud, Data Centre and Connectivity provider to a UK based Information Technologies and Telecommunications Infrastructure Fund.

Following Next's acquisition of iseek in August 2018, management have heavily invested in the construction of two state of the art physical data centres in Brisbane and Townsville and captured material contract tenders from large state government agencies and tier one corporate clients. These initiatives, along with the industry tailwinds of organisations outsourcing data storage providers, positioned the business to have a strong long-term opportunity set, representing an attractive investment for the international acquirer. The sale of iseek will deliver another robust investment return to Next Capital Fund III investors, including VPEG2 investors.

All three of these transactions will result in excellent performance outcomes for our investors.  In fact, across the June 2021 quarter, five underlying company exits were either completed or announced from Vantage Fund portfolios. These exits will deliver Vantage's Funds an average gross 4.9 X return on invested capital, representing an average gross Internal Rate of Return of 73.9% per annum.

 

MORE EXITS PLANNED FOR THE SECOND HALF OF CY2021

The market environment and economy generally remains very supportive of exits at the moment and a number of other companies across Vantage's portfolios are also positioning for exit across the second half of 2021. As managers across each of Vantage's Funds position each underlying company for sale, the number of exits from each Vantage Private Equity Growth Fund portfolio is expected to increase. These exits will ultimately provide Vantage Fund investors with an increase in returns and further distributions, providing a robust platform for each Vantage Fund to deliver their targeted returns to investors over the term of each fund.

Vantage Private Equity Growth 4 (VPEG4) remains open for investment to new investor until 30 September 2021.

Please click below to access further information about VPEG4