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The private equity industry has been through an absolute rollercoaster in the past 10 years. In the years 2000 to 2005, Australia was very much catching up with Europe and the US in terms of both deal sizes and in terms of the number of deals done. We then got to the peak boom period of 2006/2007 where the high watermark was probably the attempted takeover of Qantas.So that really was the peak of the whole private equity industry boom. Then we obviously had the global financial crisis which immediately the debt no longer became available, banks stopped lending and that had a massive impact on deal flows and the ability of private equity to actually undertake transactions.

I think as we’re coming out of the GFC the lasting impact we’re seeing is that deals are taking longer to do. I think both the banks and their clients are more risk so they are doing much more detailed due diligence, transactions are taking much longer to get away but they are happening which is positive.

Looking to the future, fortunately Australia escaped relatively lightly compared with the rest of the world and eventually work is coming back but there is certainly, there is a number of issues that are holding back the industry here including the uncertainty as to the tax regime which as a result of a recent the taxes specific group case and the other probably big impact is investors are increasingly looking to invest in China where they see huge growth in the next 10 years so Australia is battling against these factors but we’re optimistic.