Private Equity and Venture Capital Investments in Brazilian Companies in the Last 30 Years

Abstract

This study presents an overview of Brazilian Private Equity and Venture Capital (PE and VC) investments in portfolio companies between 1982 and 2014. Main source of information is Private Placement Memoranda. According to our data, the majority of capital was invested in PE, and most of the deals were in late stage companies (PE type). We observe that deal size has a cyclical behavior for PE and VC, and that the cycle reflects the dynamic of the economic environment and regulatory changes. PE deals have a mean MoM of 3.4. Although 15% of the deals were total losses (or close to total losses), 18% of the deals had extraordinary performance (MoM greater than 5 times invested capital). VC deals have a mean MoM of 1.5, less than half of PE’s MoM. Total losses correspond to 39% of the deals, what is usual in the international industry, but only 5% of the deals were high performers. VC industry was basically sponsored by government resources before 2010, and our sample reflects this period. In an underdeveloped VC ecosystem, it is difficult to fund new rounds for early stage companies’ growth, and therefore to create a high number of outperformers. We expect to have higher returns for VC in future analysis, since there has been significant evolution in the Brazilian early stage ecosystem in the last three or four years.