peHUB Finally Has a New Editor: Jon Marino

More than three months after Dan Primack took his act over to CNN/Fortune.com, peHUB finally has a new editor: Jonathan Marino, formerly of SourceMedia's M&A Journal.

Marino introduced himself today to the 50,000+ subscribers of the peHUB Wire morning email with the following:

Hi everyone, I’m Jonathan Marino, the new editor for peHUB.com. To some of you, I am a familiar face--I spent the last three years covering deals, private equity and banking for SourceMedia's M&A Journal. Additionally, I have written about a range of topics for the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, New York Post and The Washington Examiner, including investigative reports and homeland security coverage. I’ll have all my contact info posted soon, but for now, reach me at jmarino99@gmail.com.

In the next several months, you'll be seeing a number of changes and enhancements to peHub.com and the daily Wire as we look to provide greater networking capabilities, more exclusive stories and more columns from experts and executives. I will also be reaching out to many of you to get ideas about how we can improve our service.

Side note: despite CNN/Fortune's assertion that Primack would broaden his coverage well beyond private equity to the public markets, there is very little sign of that so far in his coverage, which reads just like it did under ThomsonReuters.

Meanwhile, peHUB has suffered in Primack's absence, with its writers employing his quirky language (eg., "shameless plug," "Monday Mouth-off") but without his signature wit. Hopefully, Jon Marino will bring some new life back to what has been a great media outlet for private equity and VC news.

Primack Up and Running at CNN.com

After a week off, Dan Primack has landed at CNN/Fortune's web site, more or less picking up where he left off at Thomson Reuters' peHUB. He started work yesterday and already has posted a slew of stories about Elevation Partners, angel investors vs. traditional VCs, and other VC/private equity doings.

Dan's daily email from his new perch, Term Sheet, has yet to start. You can sign up here.

For now, finding Dan's stuff is a challenge. He's working for Time Warner's CNN.com web site, which is a behemoth that includes content not only from CNN, but also from traditional Time titles such as Sports Illustrated, People, Money and Fortune. It took me a few clicks, but I will spare you the search and give you the address of his Term Sheet page: http://finance.fortune.cnn.com/category/term-sheet/.

Doesn't exactly roll off the tongue, does it?

I'm sure Primack will build this into a success over time, but for now, I think he has some work to do to stand out on this very crowded web site. For fun, just try going to CNN.com or CNN Money and see if you can easily find Primack and his articles.

peHUB and peHUB Wire Will Continue After Primack Leaves

Big news in the world of venture capital and private equity media and PR: Dan Primack, author of the peHUB Wire daily email newsletter and creator of its web site, peHUB, is leaving Thomson Reuters to create a similar offering for CNN Money's soon-to-be-revamped Fortune.com site.

Over the past several years, Primack has become arguably the single most important journalist covering VC and PE, largely through his excellent work first on the daily newsletter and then on the web site. Lots of people in the industry can pick a beef with Dan over the way he has portrayed certain news or his tenacity in covering things that they would have rather not had covered, but he has proven himself to be a thorough, dogged and very hard-working reporter.

Now he moves on to Fortune.com, where he will be covering not only VC and PE but also Wall Street and M&A through a daily email called "The Term Sheet" and a sister web site. He starts on Sept.7, the day after Labor Day.

While all the other coverage I've seen on the web has focused on Primack's move to Fortune and the CNN.com web site, my key question was about the VC/PE daily newsletter and the web site. Would they continue without Primack, who once wrote about creating the newsletter simply to raise a small amount of advertising money to fund a pet project, and has been both the brains and the brawn behind it ever since?

Larry Aragon, editor-in-chief of Thomson Reuter's Private Equity Week and VC Journal (the print/online pubs that spawned peHUB), emailed me that yes, they would both continue after Dan leaves next Thursday, though he did not identify who would be staffing them. They know they have some big shoes to fill, and it's not a slam-dunk that peHUB will be as strong, or as vital a read, as it is are now.

From a VC/PE media relations standpoint, however, this is great news -- Primack is going to bring his coverage of VC and PE over to the huge CNN.com web site, while Thomson Reuters will continue to have its offering.

Here's some other coverage on the web so far:

Statements from Fortune.com and Primack

Interview with Dan Roth of Fortune.com about Primack

Betnovate

Voltaren

VC and Private Equity Fundraising is Very Tough This Year

It's no secret in the world of venture capital and private equity  that it's not easy right now to raise new money to invest in portfolio companies. But at the PEI Investor Relations and Communications Forum last week, I picked up some interesting datapoints from Alexander Leykikh, a partner with Atlantic-Pacific Capital, a placement agent [meaning they raise money for private equity and venture capital funds for a fee]

He said that VCs and PE fund managers had been expecting a 25% reduction in the money committed to their funds by institutional investors, but that in reality, investors are cutting back by more like a 50% reduction. Furthermore, he added that only 75-80% of limited partners (investors) are re-upping.

Dan Primack on peHUB reported some data today about one fund that certainly seems to bear-out this trend. He reported that Polaris Venture Partners, which last raised a $1 billion fund, initially reduced its target for its latest fund to $500 million, but has since lowered it again to $400 million, and according to a regulatory filing, they've only raised $233 million it to date.

ABS Capital Has Embraced Social Media - Have You?

ABS Capital is a growth equity investment firm with more than $2 billion in capital under management. Unlike many venture capital and private equity firms, it has fully embraced social media and is currently working on a new web site to make it even easier for Internet users to connect with the firm and its portfolio companies.

Stephanie Carter, head of marketing and communications for the firm, spoke today at the PEI Investor Relations and Communications Forum.

Carter said most of her social media efforts have occurred during the past year, after she brought in a 25-year-old intern who worked her way into a full-time job and who is "reverse-mentoring" Carter.

The firm has a Facebook page and encourages its partners to have their own pages. In recognition of the fact that some people research the firm on LinkedIn, Carter has worked with partners to update their LinkedIn profiles even if they themselves don't use the service.

ABS uses Google Analytics to track traffic on its web site, and one of the key discoveries was that most visitors spent only three minutes on their site looking for information about the partners or portfolio companies. So the ABS web site is being redesigned to make it easier to find that information, with less emphasis on developing written content about the firm that few visitors were reading.

ABS is focused on later-stage investing, so it is constantly interested in connecting with company CEOs, senior executives and board members. By being active in social media, Carter said that ABS is telling these people, "wherever you want to meet us, fine."

What's perhaps most remarkable about this case study is that ABS Capital is not using social media because it has a particular interest in Internet companies or social media as an investment. It is using social media because it recognizes that it's a valuable business tool to help it achieve its objectives.

Limited Partners Want More and Better Communications From General Partners

It's not unusual for the general partners of venture capital and private equity firms to take their investors, known as limited partners, for granted. One reason may be structure: once the LPs have committed to invest, they are contractually bound to do so for as long as a decade or more. Another may be that LPs have traditionally been fairly passive in managing their investments and relationships.

Like a lot of things in the economy, the LP-GP relationship is changing, particularly in the area of LP relations. LPs are getting more demanding, of both the time and attention of their general partners.

I'm at the PEI Investor Relations and Communications Forum in New York, and this is one of the biggest topics of discussion.

"LPs appreciate having you ask 'how are we doing,'" said Mark Barnhill of Platinum Equity. Barnhill added that LPs appreciate having access to investing partners, and keeping them fully informed about developments at the fund and at the fund's portfolio investments.

The last thing LPs want is to be surprised, or to hear about something from someone else before hearing about it from their GPs.

Bottom line: communicate, communicate, communicate. Keep your LPs informed before, during and after you take their investment. In these times, when LPs have an infinite number of private equity options, you can't go wrong using communications as a relationship-building tool.

Nobody Should Be Making $1 Billion a Year -- Nobody

The Times ran a story this week about the 2009 pay of top hedge fund managers, who averaged a $1 billion paycheck each last year.

There is no other word for this except "disgusting."

As is typical in these stories, the Times detailed how these men (all men) managed to take home $1 billion or more. They also noted that several had "lost" money in 2008, though it was unclear whether they "lost" income or that their funds (of which they own a very small part) lost money, while they took home "only" $100 million or whatever in pay.

The Times mentioned that Congress wants to raise the tax rate on these earnings, which, incredibly, are taxed as capital gains, the lowest possible rate, rather than as ordinary income. The private equity and venture capital trade groups are fighting this proposal with all they've got.

What the Times didn't explore was whether these folks expect to pay any taxes at all on this income. Why do I think that their paychecks go directly to bank accounts in tax havens like the Cayman Islands, where they maintain "legal residence"?

I'm dead serious about my outrage here. Our society and values are seriously out of whack if we condone or applaud such outrageous pay levels. I don't have a problem with people striving to make that much, but I believe that we should tax away most of it. It should be really, really, really hard to make that much money.

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="This is not a picture of a hedge fund manager sitting at his desk."][/caption]