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Increasing requirements of stock exchanges, government regulation, and voluntary initiatives are three emerging trends that attempt to provide investors with increased quality and depth of non-financial or environmental, social, and governance (ESG) information. While ESG reporting for Private Equity firm holdings may not be mandatory yet, understanding these trends and proactively developing policies and practices for ESG data collection and reporting is both pragmatic and strategic for GPs. There are many operational benefits of collecting and reporting on non-financial data of portfolio companies, but these three emerging trends illustrate the external incentives to do so.

A global perspective on private investment operations and opportunities is essential. In this article, eFront offers an international view of issues and trends relevant to the alternative investment market with dispatches from around the world from three of our business unit leaders.

On November 14, 2013, France signed an intergovernmental agreement (“IGA”) regarding FATCA with the United States, becoming the 10th country to join the global FATCA network taking effect on July 1, 2014. The Cayman Islands, Costa Rica, Malta, the British Crown Dependencies (Jersey, Guernsey, and Isle of Man), and the Netherlands followed suit shortly thereafter, bringing the total number of IGA countries to 17, and joining the ranks of the U.K., Denmark, Germany, Ireland, Japan, Mexico, Norway, Spain and Switzerland.

“Private equity has always been a people business,” said unquote” editor Greg Gille as he began his interview with Olivier Dellenbach, eFront CEO. More and more, it seems, it’s also becoming a software business. In an unquote” video interview recorded on July 3, 2012, Gille and Dellenbach discuss the current trends and coming changes in the private equity software solutions market.

It is hard to imagine a recent regulation as far-reaching in its effect as The U.S. Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA). Although originally envisioned as a means to detect U.S. taxpayers using offshore holdings to evade taxation, FATCA has mushroomed into a global phenomenon with implications for nearly every participant in the financial services and alternative investment industries.

On Friday May 2nd, 2014, the IRS released Notice 2014-33 introducing a new transition period for 2014 and 2015 for purposes of enforcement and administration of the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, or FATCA, but only for those financial institutions making a good faith effort to comply with the regime. In addition, certain transitional aspects of the due diligence requirements are being extended.

“You can’t eat IRR.” Many PE investors have read or heard this phrase somewhere. And as will be demonstrated below, IRR truly is a terrible measure of PE performance. This fact, combined with the fund managers’ ability to shop for the best statistically…