Victoria Ivashina

How to overcome barriers to the long-term investments that are essential for solving the world’s biggest problemsThere has never been a greater need for long-term investments to tackle the world’s most difficult problems, such as climate change, human health, and decaying infrastructure. And it is increasingly unlikely that the public sector will be willing or able to fill this gap. If these critical needs are to be met, the major pools of long-term, patient capital—including pensions, sovereign wealth funds, university endowments, and wealthy individuals and families—will have to play a large role. In this accessible and authoritative account of long-term capital investment, two leading experts on the subject, Victoria Ivashina and Josh Lerner, highlight the significant hurdles facing long-term investors and propose concrete ways to overcome these difficulties.

How to overcome barriers to the long-term investments that are essential for solving the world’s biggest problemsThere has never been a greater need for long-term investments to tackle the world’s most difficult problems, such as climate change and decaying infrastructure. And it is increasingly unlikely that the public sector will be willing or able to fill this gap. If these critical needs are to be met, the major pools of long-term, patient capital—including pensions, sovereign wealth funds, university endowments, and wealthy individuals and families—will have to play a large role. In this accessible and authoritative account of long-term capital investment, two leading experts on the subject, Harvard Business School professors Victoria Ivashina and Josh Lerner, highlight the significant hurdles facing long-term investors and propose concrete ways to overcome these difficulties. Presenting the best evidence in an engaging way by using memorable stories and examples, Patient Capital describes how large investors increasingly want and need long-run investments that have the potential to deliver greater returns than those in the public markets. Yet success in such investments has been the exception. Performance has suffered from both the limitations of investors and the internal structure of their fund managers, often resulting in the wrong incentives and a lack of long-term planning. Yet the challenges facing long-term investors can be surmounted and the rewards are potentially large, both for investors and society as a whole. Patient Capital shows how to make long-term investment work better for everyone.

"Private Equity" is an advanced corporate finance book that integrates a range of topics from a private equity investor’s perspective. The book presents a set of cases used in the Private Equity Finance class, an advanced elective course offered in the Harvard Business School MBA elective curriculum. The structure of the book follows the timeline of a typical investment. Starting with deal sourcing, due diligence and valuation, followed by execution of the transaction, including issues related to capital structure and governance, the book transitions to examining operational changes and management of the capital structure, closing with a set of cases related to exit. Intended for readers interested in working for private equity firms, investing in private equity as limited partners or providing investment banking or consulting services to private equity firms, "Private Equity" is also appropriate for readers who are interested in a more detailed exploration of corporate finance.