News
The fourth Private Capital Advisory Facility (PCAF) workshop was held on the 7th of June, 2018. The event was hosted by Lucy Partners, in partnership with Zemen Bank at the Harmony Hotel. The event successfully brought together some 50 business owners and 20 officers from private companies to learn more about the role of private equity in the companies’ growth and profitability. The workshop was a six-hour programme of presentations, expert panel discussions and interactive dialogue. The workshop kicked off with opening remarks by a representative from Enterprise Partners, giving an overview of the need and benefit of equity investment in Ethiopian firms. The workshop focused on equity capital fundraising process with an interactive panel discussion, presentations and briefings on topics of interest followed, led by Lucy Partners.
There was an appearance of a special guest speaker, Esete Lulseged, Senior Investment Officer at Zoscales Partners, a regional focused private equity firm specializing in growth capital. Zoscales did an impressive job in explaining the types of private equity investors with a repeated message from Zoscales urging companies to do their own due diligence when it comes to partnering with private equity firms. This session featured a heated debate about the value of private equity firms and examples were presented by the audience. The variety of private equity capital providers in terms of structure, mandate and exit strategy was featured by Zoscales Partners. The audience was firmly advised to investigate their funders to determine a good fit and companies were strongly encouraged to hire investment experts when undergoing an investment activity or process.
The workshop was concluded with a set of presentations of real-world cases describing new and noteworthy initiatives relevant to the theme and country investment statistics. Finally, Zemen Bank introduced its Private Capital Advisory Facility. Michael Tsegaye from Zemen Bank conveyed his gratitude to all participants, particularly session leaders and presenters as workshop chairperson. He extended his thanks to participants and Enterprise Partners for making this program happen and expressed his satisfaction with the interactive nature of the discussions while congratulating participants on the extensive networking that had taken place, which he hoped would continue going forward.