UK tech companies are finding success in private equity acquisitions: Oxx

Good morning. I'd set a sign of success for UK tech private equity. Large private equity is really the exit of choice for for tech companies. It's taken over to a great extent from from public markets and to have a substantial player of the prestige and capability of Tomo Bravo acquire Auk company is it's a sign of success. Yeah. Some would say however that that success is then based on somebody else now after it's built so much in the foreground and it's and it's you know base being built in the UK ultimately and then just it heads off elsewhere. None of the the the the tech companies built in the UK stay and and why is that Why can it not necessarily have the same level of success here? Well, the companies do stay in the UK that the ownership transfers to overseas, but actually sometimes it, it comes to UK private equity as well. So there's a West Coast company called all it Board that was just acquired by HG in the in, in the billions in recent weeks. So that's a that's Auk acquirer of a substantial U.S. company that would be that would be going public. So it's, it's really about private equity and the underlying investors from private equity, they're international investors. So many of Tomo Bravo's investors would be UK or so do we just have to accept then that that's pretty much what's going to happen? You have a somewhat maybe not even necessarily a market leader, but a really big growth tech start up story in the UK. It's more than likely not going to stay. It's more than likely going to going to go to a private equity plan and perhaps when it's really substantial, perhaps 10 billion plus in in value go public and then it's more likely to go public in the US. Yeah, I mean tech startup, so maybe even AI startups should I be more specific in London then raising over $3 billion then in 2023 according to Tech Week. Is, is that is that sort of making sense for you in the sense that you have that significant growth? None of them however go on to challenge the big behemoths. And I know AI is maybe not in its infancy, but not necessarily at at its most mature stage either. Well, companies, companies from the UK and Europe do go on to, to, to challenge the behemoth start Chase is a good example of that, which raised private capital in successive rounds in the in in the UK before going public and ultimately, depending on the vote getting getting sold to to Tomma Bravo. So in, in Europe, actually there was an enormous amount of venture capital in 2021 during the pandemic era boom. It exceeded 100 billion for the for the first time. That's dropped by about 50% to the amount in in 2023. And that's the typical bust after after boom cycle. So things, things have stabilised now since that since that correction took place. And actually there's a lot of that. There are a lot of emerging companies that are that, that are really attractive in AI, in cybersecurity, in vertical software, in fintech. It's a it's a hive of activity. Yeah, some would say that there's so much regulation though in, in whether it be the UK and Europe per SE as well. Is, is, is Europe as open as it purports to be? When you take a look at some of these companies then that aren't necessarily going private equity who are maybe stateside, etcetera. Is the UK as open? Yes, the UK, the UK as open. The difference is that the European market is more, is more fragmented because of course the US market is, is, is much, much larger. So most companies that are international, that have international markets will need to focus on on the US as the substantial leading global market.