The KKR MacBank Approach to Online Media.
I spent a couple days offline at Mr Edis' Eastern View Bellarine Peninsula pre-Marriage soiree. Even if I did miss the Friday kink, golf with the kangaroos @ Angelsea on Saturday was fun as we played Happy Gilmour with the R7's.
Come Sunday morning when everyone is retreating back to their life, I was playing the final pool game on the 3/4 table, and saying there needs to be a Macquarie Bank or Private Equity approach to tech startups. Both downunder and globally. And by techstartups Im particularly talking about the online assets of media groups, as well as the potential assets of large online players, who now have big enough market caps to not move as quick as they did 1997-9.
Private Equity obviously prefer to fund (that word) "infrastructure", and all those other utilities which governments stupidly give away like roads, airports, telcos, energy and gas.. then get voters to ante up $7 every time they drive on a previously free road for the next 30 years.
Technology and the online assets of a newspaper, TV or radio station is too small cap for MacBankers. They need to make $5B off a deal in 3-5 years for it to create the right annuity stream for The Firm, that then kicks the big Continental GT bonuses in. So they still dont really care about online advertising, and how to jumpstart assets that are still small in size or even worse, potential assets, such as the podcasting assets within radio groups, or online newspaper mastheads.
The hands on approach of private equity, in building management teams that are top notch, and heavily incented (vs crap and not) is needed within online media. As is a restructure of where the online group fits within the organisation, in that it needs to be independent. And then the rollup play and expansion plans are needed to kick start some of these assets.
Newspapers are prime candidates, and as private equity increasingly sees the value to players like Viacom to start unbundling, rebundling, restructuring, and ultimately arbitraging the new gen of media, entertainment and telco hybrids.
The Former Monopolies known as Gemaya will have to metamorphise. Execution will as usual be everything : And retail et infrastructure, tech definitely isnt. The timing is right though for big to be the new small for Web 3.0.
Come Sunday morning when everyone is retreating back to their life, I was playing the final pool game on the 3/4 table, and saying there needs to be a Macquarie Bank or Private Equity approach to tech startups. Both downunder and globally. And by techstartups Im particularly talking about the online assets of media groups, as well as the potential assets of large online players, who now have big enough market caps to not move as quick as they did 1997-9.
Private Equity obviously prefer to fund (that word) "infrastructure", and all those other utilities which governments stupidly give away like roads, airports, telcos, energy and gas.. then get voters to ante up $7 every time they drive on a previously free road for the next 30 years.
Technology and the online assets of a newspaper, TV or radio station is too small cap for MacBankers. They need to make $5B off a deal in 3-5 years for it to create the right annuity stream for The Firm, that then kicks the big Continental GT bonuses in. So they still dont really care about online advertising, and how to jumpstart assets that are still small in size or even worse, potential assets, such as the podcasting assets within radio groups, or online newspaper mastheads.
The hands on approach of private equity, in building management teams that are top notch, and heavily incented (vs crap and not) is needed within online media. As is a restructure of where the online group fits within the organisation, in that it needs to be independent. And then the rollup play and expansion plans are needed to kick start some of these assets.
Newspapers are prime candidates, and as private equity increasingly sees the value to players like Viacom to start unbundling, rebundling, restructuring, and ultimately arbitraging the new gen of media, entertainment and telco hybrids.
The Former Monopolies known as Gemaya will have to metamorphise. Execution will as usual be everything : And retail et infrastructure, tech definitely isnt. The timing is right though for big to be the new small for Web 3.0.
posted by redbarren at 11:32 PM
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