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Private investment in public equity


A private investment in public equity, often called a PIPE deal, involves the selling of publicly traded or some form of or convertible security to private investors. It is an allocation of shares in a public company not through a public offering in a stock exchange. PIPE deals are part of the primary market. In the U.S., a PIPE offering may be registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission on a registration statement or may be completed as an unregistered private placement.

The attractiveness of PIPE transactions has waxed and waned since the late 1990s. For private equity investors, PIPEs tend to become increasingly attractive in markets where control investments are harder to execute. Generally, companies are forced to pursue PIPEs when capital markets are unwilling to provide financing and traditional equity market alternatives do not exist for that particular issuer.

According to market research in the US, 980 transactions have closed totaling $88.3 billion in gross proceeds during the nine months ended September 30, 2008, putting the market on pace for yet another record year.” This compares with 1,106 such deals in 2000, raising $24.3 billion and 1,301 PIPE deals in the U.S. raising a total of $20 billion in 2005. In recent years, top Wall Street investment banks have become increasingly involved in the PIPE market as placement agents.

Through the acceleration of the credit crisis in September 2008, PIPE transactions provided quick access to capital at a reasonable transaction cost for companies that might otherwise have been unable to access the public equity markets. Recently, many hedge funds have turned away from investing into restricted illiquid investments. Some investors, including Warren Buffett found PIPEs attractive because they could purchase shares or equity-linked securities at a discount to the public market price and because it had provided an investor the opportunity to acquire a sizable position at a fixed or variable price rather than pushing the price of a stock higher through its own open market purchases.


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