Corporate Venturing in Zimbabwe

Large pools of funds necessary for PE perfomance, create another investment alternative for corporates. This is through corporate venturing whereby corporates (read Delta, BAT, Interfresh) directly take up equity in unlisted companies. Alternatively corporates can indirectly take up equity through investments into a private equity fund, which then buys equity on the funds behalf. The advantages of this approach is outside hetting shareholder approval, restrictions vis a- viz regulations are minimised as compared to banks for example. With pension funds there is also the aspect of prescribed assets which can be changed at the government's whim. next time we will look at structuring of PE vehicles in Zimbabwe and teh regulatory issues if any. later