The Ledger
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Sullivan: Buyout firms routinely overpaid at 20-plus times EBITDA during COVID
“Buyout firms routinely paying 20 plus times EBITDA for quality businesses, but businesses that probably should not trade at that high valuation. Doing that in a world where interest rates were zero, and there was a lot of money being pumped into the economy by…”
Sullivan: Buyout firms relying on SBA leverage generally perform poorly
“One thing I never liked was we would have buyout firms come to us and talk about Oh, we're going to get all this leverage from the Small Business Administration. That's going to allow us to goose the returns and do all this clever stuff. To me, that was always…”
Sullivan: GP-led secondaries originated around 2010 to resolve zombie funds
“Some of the original GP secondaries came out of that world. That's how that whole phenomenon started, that you had these zombie funds in the 2000 ten-ish era, where it was clear that there was no way for the GP to earn a carry, but There needed to be some kind…”
Sullivan: Yale endowment grew from $1.75B to $40B during his tenure
“It was one and three quarter billion when I started and over forty billion when I left.”
Sullivan: Yale was an early backer of Sequoia, Kleiner Perkins, and Mayfield
“Yale was already an investor with some of the preeminent firms in Silicon Valley and Boston. Sequoia, Kleiner, Perkins, Mayfield, people like that.”