How Human Source and Enhanced Due Diligence Offers a Competitive Edge and High Return

After the longest bull market in history – which began in 2009 during the depths of the credit crisis and finally ended last winter – we are now witnessing a bear market with some ugly corrections.

With pandemic-driven turbulence suppressing deal activity in 2020, private markets rebounded the following year. But the good times did not last: 2022 opened to a far bleaker reality.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, rising interest rates, surging inflation and energy prices laid waste to speculative bets, hobbled pandemic winners and destroyed trillions of dollars of investors’ wealth.

Indeed, the turmoil in the global economy had wiped out over $7 trillion in market value from the large-cap stocks in the S&P 500 index by the spring of 2022. The S&P 500, which is widely considered the main benchmark for the performance of the U.S. stock market, dropped 20% from January until the end of September. Among other indices, Dow Jones dropped nearly 20% during the same time frame, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq fell 30%.

Meanwhile, competition has only intensified within the investment world brought on by the pandemic, globalization, deregulation, rapidly changing consumer behavior and disruptive innovation.