Private equity has made great strides in terms of improving its gender balance over the last decade. However, there is still much work to be done, write PEI’s Amy Carroll and Helen de Beer in the introduction to the Women in Private Equity Roundtable.

When asked about the latest developments in the drive to achieve a better gender balance in the industry, Pauline Wetter from LGT Capital Partners commented that it is important for young women to be exposed to female role models in finance early on. “I recently sat on a PE panel at a university alongside two colleagues, and almost 100% of the audience was made up of male students. I found it shocking to see this still in 2023, and it made me realize how important it is to start driving diversity at school level.”

Pauline delivered a much more positive assessment of the current market environment: “It represents an opportunity for us as LPs to offer a large set of capital solutions to our GPs. This could, for instance, mean co-investment, if it helps a GP to right-size an equity ticket relative to fund size in a difficult fundraising market, but it could also mean follow-on capital on year three of that investment, or a partial exit through a continuation vehicle that enables a GP to continue to back a quality asset while creating liquidity for existing LPs. True partners are becoming more innovative in the way that they provide solutions to their GPs, which has a lot of value in these complex times.”