Steve Bills

At the end of 2009, Reuters Buyouts sought to answer whether primary fundraising would suffer as a result of secondary market investments in its "Secondary Market Threatens To Use Up All The Oxygen" piece. It didn't work out that way. During the credit crisis, limited partners faced few capital calls, and if anything, secondary sales froze up along with markets everywhere. But as secondary sales become increasingly common, the prospect of future fundraisings being impacted grew. I got to thinking about this after New York secondaries firm Lexington Partners Inc. announced a deal Wednesday to buy a PE portfolio worth £470 million ($730 million) from Lloyds Banking Group.

When another 17 billionaires joined the campaign by bridge partners Bill Gates and Warren Buffett to commit to give at least half their fortunes away to philanthropy, it got us to wondering about the participation by the dealmakers from our world. So we ran a little crosstab between the names on The Giving Pledge site against the buyout and VC dealmakers on the Forbes 400. We thought we would share with you those who are participating, and equally interesting, those who are not yet. (Wanna guess which list is longer?)

Dealmakers in Connecticut foresee continued strength in the market, a new survey says. Sixty percent of respondents to a survey said they expect a moderate increase in M&A over the next six months, according to the semi-annual ACG-Thomson Reuters DealMakers Survey, sponsored by the Association for Corporate Growth and the publisher of peHub. Another 17% called for a "significant increase" in activity. The Connecticut results, announced this morning at a networking event in Stamford, are not entirely comparable with the national survey, which is to be released next Tuesday. As a point of comparison, though, the national survey released in May foresaw 85% expecting an increase in M&A activity over the next six months.