Dear Colleague,

As one of the leading private equity players, what are your biggest challenges in the post-recession world? Where do you see the new opportunities coming from? Given the new environment with lower debt level availability, and with change's in investors’ appetite, are you trying to figure out how private equity will evolve as an asset class in the next few years? Perhaps you are worried about new regulation coming your way? Or, like many of your colleagues, are searching for new deals and quality investment targets?

In Central and Eastern Europe, where private equity “has had a couple of years it would like to forget”, the sentiment has changed dramatically
in the last few months with fund managers’ confidence levels returning to the pre-Lehman era at a surprisingly fast pace. Expectations are
that buyout firms will make as many as 30% more deals this year than last. With the huge amount of unspent capital, financing (for the right
transactions!) flowing once again, currently narrow spreads between buy and sell on potential deals, relatively low valuations and funds finally prepared to make commitments, it is no surprise that several prominent new deals have already been announced since the beginning of 2010.